Body, Brain, and City Living—Contributions to More Sustainable and Healthy Urban Spaces That Promote Well-Being

Dear Colleagues,

The growing urbanisation, ageing of societies, and climate change are three major and contemporary global challenges, and despite the implications in several domains of our lives, the direct and indirect implications on physical and mental health are among our top priorities. Long exposure to noise, light, and air pollution has a direct impact on our cardiovascular and respiratory health, but more importantly, the consequences of such threats go beyond physical health by negatively affecting our cognition and being associated with an increased risk in dementia, anxiety, and depression.

Although urban areas can provide easier access to healthcare facilities, education, and job opportunities, it is also where mental health problems are more prevalent. Emotions are key drivers of our decisions and, similarly, our choices are the conduit for our well-being. While spending most of the time (work, live, and travel) in urban built environments, people can experience positive (happiness, pride, or joy) or negative (fear, sadness, or disgust) emotions triggered by the city’s infrastructure and dynamics. Moreover, positive emotions can also promote social relationships, which lead to significant benefits for people’s health and wellbeing. It is, therefore, of utmost importance to fully understand how (and how much) of our urban space—under a climate change scenario—can affect human health as a whole, paying specific attention to some vulnerable groups, such as the elderly population.

We hope to shed light on the above-mentioned challenges and build evidence-based knowledge for the identification of priorities and the support of more efficient policy-making decisions at the city/municipal level.

It is our obligation, as researchers and academics, to contribute towards the creation of healthier, more resilient, pro-social, and human-centric cities. We believe that by focusing on urban health, we are certainly promoting well-being and becoming more self-efficient, environmentally friendly, and sustainable.

This Special Issue is very inclusive and, therefore, interdisciplinarity works are privileged. We welcome all sort of articles, such as methodological, research, and theoretical articles, literature reviews, etc., with focus on sustainability, urban (mental and physiological) health, and general well-being.

We particularly welcome articles related with (but not limited to):

• Sentiments and emotions triggered by the built environment;
• “Neurourbanism” and “exposome”;
• Biophilic and topophilia cities;
• Urban stressors and their impacts on physical and mental health or well-being, with a specific focus on vulnerable groups and gender inequalities;
• Exploratory space–time data analysis of urban health determinants;
• Urban climate (and climate changes) and human health;
• Neurodegenerative diseases and urban (or environmental) stressors;
• Epidemiology applied to the urban context;
• Urban air pollution and human health;
• User-generated data and novel methods for spatial data analysis;
• Evidence on objective indicators of quality of life and happiness.

Dr. Paulo Morgado
Dr. Bruno Miranda
Guest Editors

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• urban health
• sustainability
• smart cities
• neuroscience
• neurourbanism
• exposome