DIVERCITY + BELONGING IN THE CITY
Excerpt from the Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health

"To study the city means analyzing the full 360 degrees of reality that surrounds us through both concrete appearances, as well as its impalpable truths: time, memory, need and sentiment.

There are many ways that the frenetic growth of cities has created voids. These are not so much material voids lacking construction but are more the absence of a rapport between people and their context. For example, there are places that one goes to solely for work or solely for fun, places where some go and others do not, and there are places where one feels alien." - Premise for CitizeNations, Cibic & Sharp

In looking at the city, it is imperative to look at the people.

In the good city, diversity offers stimulating variety without becoming chaotic.

The good city allows for belonging, a place to be oneself, while also allowing community – a place to care for others, to not be self-confined. 

It is this balance that creates rich living. And yet, in many cities, people find themselves with others but alone.

These cities are often conflicted: constrained by their own nostalgia and history, yet in seeking to move forward, surrendering their essence, the old being thrown away for the latest technological advances.

In this complex interplay of the city's past, present and future, we seek meaning and fulfillment.

Perhaps it would be more helpful to invite the city onto the psychiatrist's couch.

Mental health professionals help their patients understand and let go of the bondage of their past and embrace its richness in order to find and realise their hopes and dreams.

Perhaps the same concept can be applied to the complex issue of cities: by observing human aspects in urbanism, architecture and design, and to attend to the gaps and voids in the cultural landscape by exploring  issues of human relevance in a way that allows for meaning and nostalgia, as well freshness and imagination.

The editorial at the Centre for Urban Design & Mental Health, from the "ALONE TOGETHER EDITION" posits "malleable story structures" are intended to help simultaneously inspire the revealing and resolving of city/citizen backgrounds that may contribute to the constraint of different cities' hopes and dreams.
They ask questions that, with imagining, might be answered....
See more here: https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/journal-4---divercity.html

View full entry

SETTING THE FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HEALTHNK Architects and their Behavioral Healthcare Architecture Team exhale, as SUN Behavioral Health, in partnership with St. Elizabeth Healthcare, opens its newly constructed doors to the community of Northern Kentucky.   On President’s Day,February... View full entry

A Land-of-the-Lost in NJ My husband was telling me about his human discovery yesterday... While enduring freezing cold on railroad tracks, where he was surveying for a client of his that owns the railway, the words “Kean Sees All” stopped him on those tracks. This part of the railroad is... View full entry

URBAN DESIGN FOR COMMUNITY WELLBEING REDESIGNING TOKYO ____________________________________ TOKYO, August 1, 2017 @urbandesignmh      #udmhtokyo “By 2050 two thirds of the global population will live in cities. Urban health and wellbeing is increasingly becoming part of the remit of urban... View full entry

NK Architects' 2nd Annual Knowledge and Networking Event for Atlantic Health Morristown Medical Center was held May 16, 2017 at the Park Avenue Club in Florham Park, NJ. Ben Lee, AIA, CFO and Managing Director, Healthcare Practice, NK Architects, and President of the American Institute of... View full entry

Winter is on the wing, and spring is filtering in with fresh air, fresh thought and sunshine... and Mental Health Awareness Month. This annual opportunity to raise public awareness about mental health was established by the National Association for Mental Health (now Mental Health America) in... View full entry

from: http://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/TODAY Friday 7th April is World Health Day, and this year the World Health Organization has announced the theme, which is: Depression: let's talkhttp://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/blogWhile the whole world is talking about depression for World... View full entry

http://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/blog/world-happiness-report-2017-opportunities-for-designing-social-into-the-environment#comments View full entry