Visual Quality Assessment of Urban Scenes with the Contemplative Landscape Model: Evidence from a Compact City Downtown Core

In the face of rapid urbanization and the growing burden of mental health disease, there is a need to design cities with consideration for human mental health and well-being. There is an emerging body of evidence on the importance of everyday environmental exposures regarding the mental health of city inhabitants. For example, contemplative landscapes, through a series of neuroscience experiments, were shown to trigger improved mood and restoration of attention. While the Contemplative Landscape Model (CLM) for scoring landscape views was applied to single images, its suitability was never tested for walking paths and areas with a diversity of viewpoints. This study aims to fill this gap using the high-density downtown of Singapore, also known as a “City in a Garden” for its advanced urban greening strategies, as a case study. In this study, 68 360° photos were taken along four popular walking paths every 20 m. A photo set of 204 items was created by extracting three view angles from each photo. Each of them was independently scored by three experts and average CLM scores for each view and path were obtained. The results were then fed into an open-source Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS) for visualization. Cohen’s kappa agreement between experts’ scores was computed. The outcomes were mapped to facilitate the identification of the most contemplative viewpoints and paths. Moreover, specific contemplative landscape patterns have been distinguished and assessed allowing the recommendation of design strategies to improve the quality of viewpoints and paths. The inter-rater agreement reached substantial to perfect values. CLM is a reliable and suitable tool that enables the fine-grained assessment and improvement of the visual quality of the urban living environments with consideration of the mental health and well-being of urbanites. It can be used at a larger scale owing to 360° photos taken from the pedestrian’s point of view. Utilizing spatially explicit maps in QGIS platforms enables a wider range of visualizations and allows for spatial patterns to be revealed that otherwise would have remained hidden. Our findings demonstrate the usefulness of our semi-automated method. Furthermore, given the high inter-rater agreement observed, we suggest that there is potential in developing fully automated methods.

Hemodynamic Response to Three Types of Urban Spaces before and after Lockdown during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

(1) Background: Prolonged lockdowns with stay-at-home orders have been introduced in many countries since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They have caused a drastic change in the everyday lives of people living in urbanized areas, and are considered to contribute to a modified perception of the public space. As research related to the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on mental health and well-being emerges, the associated longitudinal changes of brain hemodynamics in healthy adults remain largely unknown. (2) Methods: this study examined the hemodynamic activation patterns of the prefrontal and occipital cortices of 12 participants (5 male, Mage = 47.80, SDage = 17.79, range 25 to 74, and 7 female, Mage = 39.00, SDage = 18.18, range 21 to 65) passively viewing videos from three urban sites in Singapore (Urban Park, Neighborhood Landscape and City Center) at two different time points-T1, before the COVID-19 pandemic and T2, soon after the lockdown was over. (3) Results: We observed a significant and marginally significant decrease in average oxyhemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) over time for each of the visual conditions. For both green spaces (Urban Park and Neighborhood Landscape), the decrease was in the visual cortex, while for the City Center with no green elements, the marginal decrease was observed in the visual cortex and the frontal eye fields. (4) Conclusions: The results suggest that the COVID-19-related lockdown experienced by urban inhabitants may have contributed to decreased brain hemodynamics, which are further related to a heightened risk of mental health disorders, such as depression or a decline in cognitive functions. Moreover, the busy City Center scenes induced a hemodynamic pattern associated with stress and anxiety, while urban green spaces did not cause such an effect. Urban green scenes can be an important factor to offset the negative neuropsychological impact of busy urban environments post-pandemic.

Effects of COVID-19-related stay-at-home order on neuropsychophysiological response to urban spaces: Beneficial role of exposure to nature?

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe negative effects on populations worldwide. The seriousness of the pandemic necessitated local and even national lockdowns. In Singapore a national lockdown with aStay-at-Home Order (SHO) lasted for over 7 weeks. The impact of the pandemic and of the long SHO period on neuropsychophysiological functioning remains unknown. Studies prior to the pandemic highlighted the beneficial role of nature exposure on mental health and well-being, although this has not yet been explored in the post-pandemic world. This is the first study to investigate the longitudinal changes in (1) brain frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA; neuroelectric marker of approach-related motivation), (2) depressive mood and (3) symptoms, and (4) emotional response to videos of various urban spaces from before COVID-19 to immediately after the SHO in Singapore was over. Finally, we examined whether higher vs lower exposure to nature during the SHO moderated changes over time. Methods: The sample included 25 healthy adult Singaporeans (56% female, Mage = 40.4 y, SD = 17.8), who attended two electroencephalography (EEG) lab sessions, within a year before the COVID-19 pandemic (T1) and immediately following the SHO (T2). The participants viewed 9 fixed-frame videos, filmed before the pandemic, from 3 urban public spaces (Busy Downtown, Residential Green, Lush Garden) on the roll-up screen. They rated their emotional response (arousal, valence) after each video and completed Becks Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) as a measure of depressive symptoms, Profile of Mood Scale (POMS), as a measure of momentary mood, and self-reported the frequency and duration of their nature visits during the SHO. Results: Linear mixed models were fitted to examine changes over time, and effect moderation by amount of nature exposure during the SHO. The results showed decrease in FAA (p < 0.001), increase in depressive symptoms (p = 0.046), and a trend for marginal increase in momentary mood disturbance (p = 0.097) after the SHO. Importantly, people with high nature exposure during SHO had greater decrease in FAA over time (p = 0.005) than those with low nature exposure, FAA scores decreased the most for Residential Green. Valence and Arousal did not change over time, but Arousal towards Busy Downtown decreased among high nature exposure individuals (p = 0.002). Conclusions: Post SHO, brain activity and responsiveness to landscapes changed, and showed a general reduction in positive emotions and increased depressive symptoms among participants. The higher nature exposure during the SHO did not help mitigate this depressive symptoms, as previous research would suggest. This can be due to the modified quality of nature exposure during lockdown, which highlights the importance of high quality nature experience in cities and the provision of diversified visual exposures. Potential neuropsychophysiological consequences of SHO should be considered by policy makers in the post-COVID-19 world.

The Association Between Physical and Mental Health and Face Mask Use During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparison of Two Countries With Different Views and Practices.

BACKGROUND: The physical and mental health of citizens living in a country that encouraged face masks (China) and discouraged face masks (Poland) during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic remained unknown. We conducted a cross-country study to compare the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Poles and Chinese. This study aimed to compare the levels of psychological impact of pandemic and levels of anxiety and depression between China and Poland. METHODS: The survey collected information on demographic data, physical symptoms, contact history, and precautionary measures. The psychological impact was assessed using the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), and mental health status was assessed by the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21). The chi-squared test was used to analyze the differences in categorical variables between the two populations. Linear regression was used to calculate the bivariate associations between independents variables (e.g., physical symptoms and precautionary measures) and dependent variables (e.g., mental health outcomes). RESULTS: This study included a total of 2,266 respondents from both countries (1,056 Poles and 1,210 Chinese). There were significantly less Polish respondents who wore face masks (Poles: 35.0%; Chinese: 96.8% p < 0.001). Significantly more Polish respondents reported physical symptoms resembling COVID-19 infection (p < 0.001), recent medical consultation (p < 0.01), recent COVID-19 testing (p < 0.001), and hospitalization (p < 0.01). Furthermore, Polish respondents had significantly higher levels of anxiety, depression and stress (p < 0.001) than Chinese. The mean IES-R scores of Poland and China were above the cut-off for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Besides precautionary measures, unemployment, retirement, physical symptoms resembling COVID-19 infection, recent medical consultation or COVID-19 testing, and long daily duration of home confinement were risk factors for PTSD symptoms, anxiety, depression, or stress for Polish respondents. CONCLUSION: Use of face masks at the community level may safeguard better physical and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a need of health education with scientific information from Polish health authority on the proper use of face masks and reduce social stigma. This study was limited by the respondent sampling method that had compromised the representativeness of samples.