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- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand
(författare)
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Making space for resilient urban well-being
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis addresses the need for urban landscapes that provide resilient contributions to inhabitants’ well-being while also limiting impacts on the Earth system. It aims to (1) advance a nuanced understanding of how urban environments relate to urban dwellers’ well-being, and (2) formulate guidelines for planning that supports urban dwellers’ well-being and align with global sustainability. The thesis consists of five empirical studies of Swedish and Danish urban landscapes in which day-to-day experiences and mental disorders were studied as different components of well-being. A variety of spatial and statistical analysis methods were leveraged, including public participation geographic information systems, remote sensing, deep learning, accessibility analysis, and spatial regression.Results convey that urban environments relate to well-being in substantial ways, but these map poorly onto the simplistic urban-nature or urban-rural dichotomies that dominate current discourse. Support of well-being instead seems to depend on spatial conditions comprised of the street network’s topological configuration, the population distribution, and the accessibility of natural settings. Since the 1990s, contrasts have intensified between stressful urban cores that are increasingly full of people and peripheral areas that are “left behind” and high-risk in terms of mental illness. Results show that urban neighbourhoods could contribute to well-being through fulfilment of three guidelines: (1) a balance of residential and daytime populations, (2) no extreme concentration of movement, and (3) accessible natural settings. Strategies in accordance with the guidelines can increase so-called topodiversity, which refers to variation in spatial conditions across an urban landscape that permits support of well-being through different pathways. Increasing topodiversity in both central and peripheral areas
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| 2. |
- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand, et al.
(författare)
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Residential environments across Denmark have become both denser and greener over 20 years
- 2021
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP. - 1748-9326. ; 16:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite much attention in the literature, knowledge about the dynamics surrounding urban densification and urban greening is still in dire need for architects, urban planners and scientists that strive to design, develop, and regenerate sustainable and resilient urban environments. Here, we investigate countrywide patterns of changes in residential density and residential nature at high spatial resolution over a time period of >20 years (1995-2016), combining a dataset of address-level population data covering all of Denmark (>2 million address points) with satellite image-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data. Our results show that many residential environments across Denmark have witnessed simultaneous densification and greening since the mid-1990s. In fact, the most common change within 500 metre neighbourhoods around individual address points is of joint increases in population and NDVI (28%), followed by increasing NDVI with stable population figures (21%). In contrast, only 8% of neighbourhoods around address points have seen a decline in either population or NDVI. Results were similar in low- middle- and high-density environments, suggesting that trends were driven by climate change but also to some degree enabled by urban planning policies that seek to increase rather than decrease nature in the cities.
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| 3. |
- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand
(författare)
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The Topodiverse City: Urban Form for Subjective Well-Being
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Built Environment. - : Frontiers. - 2297-3362. ; 7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research is now better than ever able to unveil how urban inhabitants’ movement, behavior and experiences relate to the urban forms in which they take place. Consequently, urban form might increasingly be able to function as a focal point for different strands of research that focus on sustainable urban life, and as a link between research and planning practice through the development of empirically informed design principles. Drawing on literature from urban morphology, complex systems analysis, environmental psychology, and neuroscience, I provide a wide-angle view of how urban form relates to subjective well-being through movement, social and economic activity, experiences and psychological restoration. I propose three principles for urban form that could promote subjective well-being while also mitigating the environmental impact of cities in industrialized societies. The principles revolve around so-called topodiversity, meaning variation across an urban area in spatial conditions that allows subjective well-being to be promoted through several different pathways. The principles together suggest an urban form that I call the topodiverse city. The topodiverse city displays a polycentric structure and is more spatially contained than the sprawling city, yet not as compact as the dense city. I also propose indicators to measure the principles using mostly openly available data and analysis methods, to further research on how urban form can enable urban subjective well-being with low environmental impact.
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| 4. |
- Samuelsson, Karl, Doktorand, et al.
(författare)
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Visiting nearby natural settings supported wellbeing during Sweden's "soft-touch" pandemic restrictions
- 2021
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Ingår i: Landscape and Urban Planning. - : Elsevier. - 0169-2046 .- 1872-6062. ; 214
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The coronavirus pandemic entailed varying restrictions on access, movement and social behavior in populations around the world. Knowledge about how people coped with "soft-touch" restrictions can inform urban spatial planning strategies that enhance resilience against future pandemics. We analyzed data from an online place based survey on 2845 places across Sweden that respondents abstained from visiting, visited with similar frequency, or visited more frequently in spring 2020 as compared to before the pandemic. In spatial logistic regression models, we relate geographical and sociodemographic properties of places (fields, forests, water, residential population density and daytime population density) to self-perceived changes in wellbeing from visiting the given place less or more often, respectively. Abstaining from visiting places with natural features located in areas of high residential density was associated with a self-perceived negative influence on wellbeing. Yet, fields, forests and water were strongly associated with places people claimed wellbeing benefits from during pandemic restrictions. The further a visited place was from the respondent's home, the more likely it was to have a positive wellbeing influence. As an illustrative case, we map our models onto the landscape of Stockholm, showing that some neighborhoods are likely more resilient than others when coping with pandemic restrictions. Both the most and least resilient neighborhoods span the socio-economic spectrum. Urban planning will do well to enable equitable, easy access to natural settings by foot or bike, to increase pandemic preparedness as well as support climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection.
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