Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Roya Hatami varzaneh ¹
• Mahmoud Shokuhi Dolatabadi ²
• Fatemeh Bahrami Gahruei ²

¹ Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Isfahan University of Art, Isfahan, Iran

² Department of architecture and urban planning, Art University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

Urban stress, as one of the most prevalent mental health-related disorders, reflects the connection between the urban environment and its impact on human psychological well-being. In this regard, enhancing the quality of urban spaces, with an emphasis on therapeutic urban design, contributes to the improvement of residents’ mental health. The assessment of perceived stress levels in urban spaces is influenced by sound and visual environments as well as urban stressors, including natural features, traffic, enclosure, crowding, and natural or human-made sounds. Although the impact of sound and visual environments on various aspects of mental health is well-recognized and highlighted in previous studies, their independent and interactive impacts on urban residents’ stress remain largely unknown and require further investigation. Therefore, conducting studies tailored to the specific conditions of Isfahan is essential to expand the knowledge of urban psychology. The main research question is as follows: How do sound and visual environments affect the perceived stress levels of residents in urban spaces of Isfahan? The present study was designed as a laboratory-based experiment aimed at evaluating the therapeutic impacts of sound and visual environments on residents’ stress in the urban spaces of Isfahan. This study was conducted using a two-way factorial design (four sound environments × five visual environments), and participants were randomly assigned to one of the 20 therapeutic environments in a virtual reality laboratory. These 20 videos were produced to realistically simulate urban experiences and examine their impacts. Each video combined images of selected urban spaces in Isfahan (Shahid Rajaei Park, Sepah Street, Imam Ali Underpass, and Shahid Keshvari Neighborhood) with sounds including nature sounds, crowd murmurs, and traffic noise. Nature sounds represented relaxing experiences in green spaces, crowd sounds reflected human presence in urban environments, and traffic noise represented exposure to auditory stress-inducing sources. This collection covers a diverse range of common urban spaces in Isfahan and represents familiar and dominant auditory experiences for residents. A total of 100 students from the University of Art Isfahan completed the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) to induce a moderate level of stress before exposure to the therapeutic environments. Participants reported their stress levels both before and after exposure to a randomly assigned environmental treatment using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). The results indicate that the impact of sound environments on reducing urban stress is 1.4 times greater than that of visual environments. Moreover, environments with natural characteristics, regardless of whether they are auditory or visual, have a greater impact on stress reduction compared to environments with artificial features. The combination of natural landscapes and nature sounds had the strongest impact on perceived stress in urban spaces compared to other environments. These findings indicate that sound and visual environments influence perceived stress both independently and interactively. This interaction plays a crucial role in enhancing the quality of urban spaces and shaping users’ psychological experiences, which is observable in specific combinations of sound and visual environments.

Keywords

• Mental Health
• Urban Stress
• Sound Environment
• Visual Environment

Main Subjects

• environmental psychology