If you've ever chatted with me for more than five minutes about my career, you know that improving quality of life and mental wellbeing are the primary drivers of my work with the military. I've spent some time this summer developing this handout summarizing what research says about the relationships between urban design and mental health and how this could be applied in DoD settings, and hope that it is helpful to those of you who plan and design DoD sites and facilities.
Please reach out to me at abbey@theschreifergroup.com if you have any questions or to chat more!
How Do Built and Natural Environments Affect Mental Health?
With the concerning rise in mental health disorders and suicides among active-duty service members, and a growing body of evidence linking the built environment to mental health, there is an increasing need for DoD-affiliated planners, urban designers, architects, and landscape architects to implement therapeutic urban planning and design strategies at the neighborhood and site scales. These strategies encourage positive physiological and behavioral responses that are supportive of military mental health and wellbeing.
Physiological Responses
When we enter a new environment or place, our bodies unconsciously respond to it. Have you ever been in a place that felt surprisingly comfortable, where you wanted to stay and spend more time? Perhaps a public park, a sidewalk café, or an outdoor amphitheater? What about places that did not feel comfortable to you, like a busy sidewalk next to a noisy street or an overly crowded restaurant? Though you may not have known it at the time, your body was self-regulating in accordance with how comfortable or stressful that place felt to you.
These instinctual reactions can be based on personal, prior associations with features (e.g., relaxing at the beach due to happy memories of previous family trips, increased heartbeat when you are in a doctor’s office after a recent traumatic medical experience), or could be based on innate predispositions towards features that support survival (e.g., relaxing in a shaded natural area, startling when you hear a loud noise). Planners should be aware of common physiological responses to design features and integrate therapeutic design strategies where possible to encourage positive responses in users of a space.
Behavioral Responses
In addition to our unconscious, physiological responses to a place, the design of a built or natural environment also encourages certain behaviors that might be good or bad for our mental health. We are more likely to walk to run an errand if our destination is located within a 15-minute walk along a safe, comfortable route. We are more likely to stay inside and not build social relationships with our neighbors if we do not have a front porch or yard.
We know from an extensive body of research which behaviors are and are not supportive of military mental health. Therapeutic lifestyle changes, which include exercise, nutrition and diet, exposure to nature, relationships, recreation, stress management, spiritual involvement, and contribution and service, have demonstrated positive effects on mental health.
How Can DoD Urban Planners and Designers Support Military Mental Health?
Planners and urban designers can design built and natural environments that are supportive of mental health by:
Integrating therapeutic features into the built environment
Locating therapeutic features or amenities within close proximity to where people live and work
Ensuring connected, safe, and comfortable transportation networks to provide access to these locations
These strategies should be promoted during every part of the DoD planning process – e.g., master planning, area development planning, site planning, 1391 development, and design – or in small-scale projects funded with discretionary funding. The table on the next page lists example design strategies and demonstrates how they are aligned with Unified Facilities Criteria 2-100-01, Installation Master Planning principles.
Implementation Guidance
With limited funding available for real property improvements, and persistent stigma around discussing mental health issues among service members, DoD-affiliated planners should take the following approaches when soliciting support for the aforementioned planning and design strategies:
Tie the proposed planning or design strategy to mission-related outcomes where possible. There is evidence that definitively ties mental health to service members’ ability to recover from service-related trauma and to deploy; this messaging may resonate more with mission-focused leadership than tying improvements to mental wellbeing alone.
Better mental health equates to improved focus, decisiveness and adaptability in challenging situations, and the ability to complete job assignments and deployments when needed.
Exposure to nature, social interactions, recreation, and proper nutrition are all linked to faster healing rates for both physical and mental health issues.
Take advantage of discretionary funding to avoid losing time to approval processes. Facilities Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization (SRM) and other discretionary funding programs can accomplish small-scale improvements that make a big difference for mental resiliency.
Target proposed improvements for residential areas. Barracks and privatized housing areas are the most common places for a suicide attempt on military bases. Prioritize adding a variety of gathering areas to barracks that currently lack them (e.g., indoors, outdoors, programmed, unprogrammed, small, large).
Target proposed improvements for unit workplaces that need them most. Workplaces with no windows (e.g., SCIFs), those that are subject to high noise, and those of units experiencing poor mental health, should be prioritized for improvements.
Case Study
Fort Liberty Liberty Trail, NC
The Liberty Trail is a proposed base-wide urban trail network at Ft. Liberty that will connect key destinations across the installation. The 10-foot-wide trail will be multi-modal, allowing for pedestrian, cyclist, and unit physical training use, and will traverse approximately 14 miles around natural and developed areas of Ft. Liberty.
The JG&A-The Schreifer Group Joint Venture completed the planning and design of the trail, which was designed to connect base housing areas with community destinations like gyms and dining facilities on-post. It will be dotted with pocket parks, educational signage, water stations, and other amenities. The trail will boost Soldier and Civilian quality of life by offering opportunities for physical fitness, exposure to nature, and social interactions. Further benefits include improved air quality and reduced traffic congestion and car dependency on post.
Members of the Ft. Liberty community were invited to participate in the design process by attending a public open house and follow-on small group meetings with Department of Public Works personnel. Participants were asked for their feedback about safety concerns, accessibility, connectivity, pocket park locations, and alternate trail routes and connections. These engagements gave members of the Ft. Liberty community influence over the final design and ensured that the proposed trail features will meet their needs.
The trail project uses the following strategies to support mental health:
Provides exercise and recreational amenities by creating trail network
Facilitates social interactions by building in pocket parks, connecting key community destinations
Exposing residents to nature by routing the trail through and between natural areas
Reducing the need for car-based commuting and encouraging a less stressful commuting option
Connecting and improving access to places that support therapeutic lifestyle changes
Asking for input from community members to give them control over their surroundings
Planning for Better Mental Health and Quality of Life
TSG uses planning and design to improve quality of life and mental resiliency at federal properties around the world. To learn more, please contact us at info@theschreifergroup.com.
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