[Does the city make us ill? The effect of urban stress on emotions, behavior, and mental health]. / Macht uns die Stadt krank? Wirkung von Stadtstress auf Emotionen, Verhalten und psychische Gesundheit.

Urban life correlates with a higher risk for several mental diseases. A stress-dependent pathomechanism is considered to play a crucial role. Likewise, current data indicate a higher responsivity of the brain to social stress in urban residents. At the same time, city dwellers live under more advantageous conditions, encountering better access to education, personal evolvement, healthcare, and cultural diversity. It can be assumed that a higher exposition to chronic social stress in urban areas - in combination with other risk factors (social, psychological, or genetic) - can turn into a pathogenic factor, particularly in the case of impeded access to resilience-promoting resources of the city. It urgently remains to be explained which social groups are at increased risk and which urban planning and political measures to counteract social stress prove to be health protective. Therefore, we call for an interdisciplinary research approach, which incorporates urban research, medicine, and neuroscience and encourages a transdisciplinary knowledge exchange with politics, civil society, and citizens. With regard to the rapid pace of urbanization worldwide, further research and action is urgently required.

Residential green space and air pollution are associated with brain activation in a social-stress paradigm.

We examined the influence of three major environmental variables at the place of residence as potential moderating variables for neurofunctional activation during a social-stress paradigm. Data from functional magnetic resonance imaging of 42 male participants were linked to publicly accessible governmental databases providing information on amount of green space, air pollution, and noise pollution. We hypothesized that stress-related brain activation in regions important for emotion regulation were associated positively with green space and associated negatively with air pollution and noise pollution. A higher percentage of green space was associated with stronger parietal and insular activation during stress compared with that in the control condition. More air pollution was associated with weaker activation in the same (but also extended) brain regions. These findings may serve as an important reference for future studies in the emerging field of "neuro-urbanism" and emphasize the importance of environmental factors in urban planning.

Defining pathways to healthy sustainable urban development.

Goals and pathways to achieve sustainable urban development have multiple interlinkages with human health and wellbeing. However, these interlinkages have not been examined in depth in recent discussions on urban sustainability and global urban science. This paper fills that gap by elaborating in detail the multiple links between urban sustainability and human health and by mapping research gaps at the interface of health and urban sustainability sciences. As researchers from a broad range of disciplines, we aimed to: 1) define the process of urbanization, highlighting distinctions from related concepts to support improved conceptual rigour in health research; 2) review the evidence linking health with urbanization, urbanicity, and cities and identify cross-cutting issues; and 3) highlight new research approaches needed to study complex urban systems and their links with health. This novel, comprehensive knowledge synthesis addresses issue of interest across multiple disciplines. Our review of concepts of urban development should be of particular value to researchers and practitioners in the health sciences, while our review of the links between urban environments and health should be of particular interest to those outside of public health. We identify specific actions to promote health through sustainable urban development that leaves no one behind, including: integrated planning; evidence-informed policy-making; and monitoring the implementation of policies. We also highlight the critical role of effective governance and equity-driven planning in progress towards sustainable, healthy, and just urban development.