Streets and Stress: A Pilot Study on How Quality and Design of Streets Impacts on Urban Stress

Abstract

Objectives: To identify how quality and design of streets impacts urban stress. Background: Few studies have comprehensively addressed environmental factors affecting stress in urban public spaces. However, a remarkable portion of our everyday life is spent in public spaces, particularly streets. Method: This study seeks to evaluate the effect of three types of streets as major public spaces on stress. These include a street with the dominance of green spaces (A), a motorist-oriented street (B), and a pedestrian street (C). For this purpose, we selected a group of participants ( n = 16) aged 20-30, with an equal number of men and women who were generally healthy and had normal stress levels. Participants were asked to wear an electroencephalogram (EEG) headset, walk different streets, and answer the Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS) and urban design qualities questionnaires. Results: According to the results, participants experienced the highest stress in street type B and the lowest in type A. Conclusions: Green space and vegetation, a sense of security, privacy and coziness, climatic comfort, and safety of space had the most positive effect on stress reduction. Whereas noise pollution, vehicle traffic, and crowdedness were the most critical factors of stress. Finally, our findings suggest that the component of green space has a more significant effect on stress reduction compared with the elimination of vehicle traffic.