Disaggregated Mental Health Enhancing Features of the Urban Built Environment:

A Critical Interpretive Re-Consideration

Abstract

A growing number of scientific research has linked the built environment to mental health and well-being, most use aggregated definitions of built environment measures that however do not lend themselves to comparison. The study conducted a critical interpretive synthesis of built environment constructs as used in studies that relate the built environment to mental health. The study focuses on street setting elements and relooks at these measures at the elemental level to present a disaggregated analysis of what is being measured within these constructs. The study presents a causal loop diagram to tease out the interactions between the elements to present an ecological perspective of the interaction between the elements and mental health. The objective of the study is through a critical interpretive synthesis to link the opportunities of enhancing mental health to the features of urban streets by generating a causal loop diagram. The study found that scale plays a key role in the conceptualization of constructs and recommends use of the most practical lowest scale to allow a multi scale analysis.