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Sustainably balancing the wellbeing of people and our planet: Learning from lockdowns and the intersecting climate, environmental, and mental health crises.
Workshop W16 at conference DSA2022: Just sustainable futures in an urbanising and mobile world.
Restricting people's activities during the pandemic positively benefited the environment, but also increased social inequalities and mental health consequences. Our workshop will develop ideas for a "new normal" in the global North and South to optimise wellbeing of both people and the planet.
Long Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic hugely affected the lives of everyone across the world. Restricted activities and travel, often for many months at a time, positively benefited the climate. Yet, loss of social contact, employment and leisure activities, or having to work in hazardous and poorly paid jobs, severely affected social inequalities and mental health.
We now look to possibilities for a "new normal", and a "just transition" to more sustainable living. We ask whether it is possible to learn from the benefits of restricted human activities for the environment, while safeguarding mental health and equity.
Our workshop is led by the UCL Division of Psychiatry's Green Team and others. We're keen to explore and expand an approach used with Divisional postgraduate students, to a wider DSA2022 audience.
We will:
1. Generate thoughts on wellbeing for people and planet
2. Develop ideas for a "new normal" and possibilities for environmental interventions that also support people's wellbeing.
We'll share workshop ideas on our Green Team website, encouraging future activities and strategy, including developing related research projects.
Before the workshop we'll share information on the climate/environment, mental health, and inequality.
All workshop delegates will meet, and then move into breakout rooms. Subgroups will brainstorm wellbeing, positive changes brought by lockdowns, and how lockdowns affected mental health and inequalities. We'll consider how an environmentally-friendly "new normal" might be implemented sustainably, including supporting equality and wellbeing.
The group will then reconvene to share and discuss implications for future individual and collective action.
The uploaded file contains:
the core essential advance readings, plus the papers referenced;
brief biographies of the workshop convenors and facilitators;
optional further readings
Why would you like to speak in this workshop?:
The attached file is the essential advance reading for the workshop: paper references and the papers themselves, plus brief biographies of the convenors and facilitators, and a list of references for optional further reading.
I would like to discuss the impact of urban stress and the possibilities of joy and wellbeing within the unmitigated fabric of Mumbai, India. The study is developed into an architectural intervention where the possibility of improving wellbeing through creating desirable public spaces.
Why would you like to speak in this workshop?:
By 2025, National Institute of Mental Health and Awareness Report 2018(NIMHANS) predicts 38.1 million years of healthy life will be lost to mental illness in India.
The pandemic in the past two years has further highlighted the Issue of mental health and psychological stress. The lockdown brought the city that never sleeps to a full stop, stimulating how the overly populated public transport system and the constant traffic in Mumbai has the citizens bereft. Today, the answer to Mumbai's development is to optimize planning to serve as engines of economic development creating derivative and uninspired urban spaces.
This combined with the stressful urban lifestyle creates a state of psychological discomfort which leads to palpating urban stress and anxiety in metros.
This conversation brings forth a paradigm shift in the way we look at our cities, to consciously rebuilding the fabric to bring subjective wellbeing at the locus of planning and design.
The research is an exploration of experience to a spatial setting, where urban environment is understood as an experience which has an emotional stimulus to understand what is necessary to facilitate urban happiness and wellbeing within the work-live paradigm in the socially incoherent city life. From this exploration , the importance of creating pro-social spaces in the construction of joy came through, in the daily movements.
As a person's movement in a city often becomes very controlled within the work - live transect, the study looks into the opportunity of railway station becoming a space for wellbeing oriented development.
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Bella Vivat (UCL)
Short Abstract:
Restricting people's activities during the pandemic positively benefited the environment, but also increased social inequalities and mental health consequences. Our workshop will develop ideas for a "new normal" in the global North and South to optimise wellbeing of both people and the planet.
Long Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic hugely affected the lives of everyone across the world. Restricted activities and travel, often for many months at a time, positively benefited the climate. Yet, loss of social contact, employment and leisure activities, or having to work in hazardous and poorly paid jobs, severely affected social inequalities and mental health.
We now look to possibilities for a "new normal", and a "just transition" to more sustainable living. We ask whether it is possible to learn from the benefits of restricted human activities for the environment, while safeguarding mental health and equity.
Our workshop is led by the UCL Division of Psychiatry's Green Team and others. We're keen to explore and expand an approach used with Divisional postgraduate students, to a wider DSA2022 audience.
We will:
1. Generate thoughts on wellbeing for people and planet
2. Develop ideas for a "new normal" and possibilities for environmental interventions that also support people's wellbeing.
We'll share workshop ideas on our Green Team website, encouraging future activities and strategy, including developing related research projects.
Before the workshop we'll share information on the climate/environment, mental health, and inequality.
All workshop delegates will meet, and then move into breakout rooms. Subgroups will brainstorm wellbeing, positive changes brought by lockdowns, and how lockdowns affected mental health and inequalities. We'll consider how an environmentally-friendly "new normal" might be implemented sustainably, including supporting equality and wellbeing.
The group will then reconvene to share and discuss implications for future individual and collective action.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Thursday 7 July, 2022, -Bella Vivat (UCL)
Asmita Patnaik (Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture, Mumbai)