Mental Health in Urban Green and Blue Spaces: Access, Experience, and Equity

More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities, and urbanisation continues to reshape the everyday conditions under which people rest, move, and recover. Urban green and blue spaces — parks, community gardens, urban forests, street trees, rivers, canals, coastal waterfronts, and managed wetlands — have gained increasing recognition as public health assets embedded in the fabric of city life. A substantial body of evidence links nearby urban nature to reduced psychological distress, improved mood, and stronger neighbourhood cohesion. Yet the field is far from settled.Critically, the psychological experience of urban green and blue spaces is inseparable from the material conditions of urban life. Perceived quality, microclimatic comfort, ambient soundscape, biodiversity, air quality, transport noise, and perceived safety all shape whether and how people encounter, linger in, and benefit from these spaces. So too does accessibility, understood not only as physical proximity but as the interplay of affordance, walkability, social inclusion, and equitable distribution across neighbourhoods and populations. Children navigating dense residential environments, older adults ageing in place, and communities with limited green infrastructure face fundamentally different psychological landscapes. These equity dimensions remain only partially understood and underrepresented in the literature.This Research Topic gathers research that advances understanding of the psychological processes through which outdoor urban green and blue spaces shape mental health, emotional well-being, and social outcomes, with particular emphasis on how urban-specific environmental qualities, patterns of access, and socio-spatial context mediate or moderate those processes. Unlike approaches centred on structured programmes or therapeutic facilitation, this collection focuses on the psychological significance of urban green and blue spaces as part of the everyday built environment: spaces that residents encounter, choose to use, and are shaped by through the ordinary rhythms of city life. Contributions should engage with underlying psychological mechanisms, not solely document associations or evaluate policy outcomes. For studies addressing environmental exposures such as heat, noise, air quality, or green-space accessibility, the psychological focus should remain explicit, with attention to relevant psychological processes, mechanisms, and/or theory rather than primarily descriptive, epidemiological, or policy-oriented analysisWe welcome empirical studies, theoretical contributions, systematic reviews, and methodological papers. Cross-cultural, non-Western, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches are strongly encouraged, as are studies centring populations that are frequently underrepresented in mainstream research.Themes of interest include:o Spatial and sensory qualities of urban green and blue spaces — vegetation structure, biodiversity, soundscape, water features — and their role in psychological restoration and emotional experienceo Thermal comfort and microclimatic conditions in urban outdoor spaces as drivers of psychological stress, comfort, and engagemento Ambient exposures — noise and air quality — in green and blue urban settings, and their relationship to mental health and stress regulationo Urban heat adaptation and walkability as psychological dimensions of everyday engagement with green and blue infrastructureo Perceived safety, aesthetic quality, and maintenance as psychological mediators of well-being in urban public natureo Social cohesion, place attachment, and community identity through shared use of green and blue spaceso Children’s and older adults’ differential access to and experience of urban green and blue infrastructureo Environmental justice and unequal distribution of green/blue space quality and access, examined psychologicallyo Active and passive recreational use patterns and their differential links to well-being outcomeso Cross-cultural and non-Western perspectives on the psychological meaning of urban natureo Psychological resilience and related resources built, maintained, or strengthened through contact with natureo Transdisciplinary research at the interface of environmental psychology and environmental epidemiology, with an emphasis on psychological processes underlying observed health effects o Development of novel psychometric and other instruments for the assessment of these psychological processes Topic editors: Angel Dzhambov, Sandra Wajchman-Świtalska, Samuel Chng Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85408/mental-health-in-urban-green-and-blue-spaces-access-experience-and-equity