Assessing the Impact of High-density High-heterogeneity Urban District Landscape on Psychological Health and Optimizing via Evidence-based Design

Not only do high-density and high-heterogeneity urban environments impair our environmental aesthetic experience, they also influence our psychological health. These negative impact of high density urban environments, as revealed by evidences, can be mitigated by design strategies such as increasing visible green, improving scenicness and safety and etc. We are advancing one of the core value of landscape architecture from positive environmental experience to public well-being by incorporating with cognitive neuroscience and medical research. Evidence-based design and state-of-art techniques (such as neurological-physical measures) were used in assessing the health impact of different environmental combinations within high dense and heterogenic urban district. The assessment would facilitate diagnosing potential spatial components that stimulate high stress and high cognitive load. Based on the diagnosis, proper design interventions would be proposed and their potential performance would be pre-evaluated via augmented/virtual reality. This study integrated two interrelated academic frontiers—evidence-based health design and health assessment via environmental neuroscience. The expected evidence-based design approach can be applied directly to case-specific design and optimization.