Restorative and Afflicting Qualities of the Microspace Encounter: Psychophysiological Reactions to the Spaces of the City

Abstract

There is a long-standing narrative within health research that nature (or green space) is beneficial for health, whereas urban (or gray spaces) are not. This prior research often focuses on broad, often binary, nature–urban categorizations rather than the particular qualities of the microspace encounter, stimulating embodied stress or restorative human reactions. Drawing on the findings of an interdisciplinary and exploratory mixed-methods study investigating how people physiologically respond to their environment, this article discusses the microspace encounters that can evoke restorative and afflicting human responses. In doing so, this article demonstrates the strengths of combining biosensing technology with qualitative methods but stresses that narrative and psychophysiological capture only identifies a small aspect of an experience.