Assessing urban green & blue spaces for human mental health and well-being

Urban areas, hosting two thirds of the population of the European Region, are often unhealthy places to live, characterized by heavy traffic, pollution, noise, abuse and social segregation especially for disadvantaged people, adolescents and young families. To reduce negative mental health effects of environmental degradation and climate change, functional and healthy ecosystems in cities are a necessity. In particular, Green Infrastructure: green (land) and blue (water) spaces that can improve environmental conditions and therefore citizens’ health and quality of life. Recent studies demonstrated that provision of ecosystem services associated with human health do not consistently depend on the amount of the greenery, but rather quality of that vegetated open spaces. Another emerging research area called evidence-based design has investigated the influence of exposure to different types and components of the landscape on bio-physical responses and self-reported health measures. These findings bring up the need to synthesize the available knowledge about the types and components of urban green & blue spaces and their likely positive impact on mental health, and also to identify the gaps in knowledge. EKLIPSE is a EU funded project to facilitate linkages between science, policy and society, through different actions, such as knowledge synthesis, identifying research priorities, and building networks of knowledge holders and users. EKLIPSE has been asked to support the conduct of a systematic, multidisciplinary and cross-cultural knowledge assessment of “the types and components of urban green & blue spaces and their likely positive impact on mental health”. The proposed contribution will illustrate the operative planning stage of this work conducted by a group of European experts in 12 months