A place called Hope
Psychology as A Tool for Urban Transformation
Written by Chris Murray, Recurve Associate, for World Cities Day 2025
Hope as an emotion and idea is profoundly important to human experience, ever present in ancient myth, Christian theology and more recently in psychological and medical research.
The philosophical conclusions are mixed: something we cannot live without, or a rose-tinted veneer concealing the harsh realities of existence?
The medical conclusions are however exceptionally clear: hope is linked to reduced disease and risk of all-cause mortality, increased psychological wellbeing and life satisfaction (2). Conversely, a sense of hopelessness pushes people toward the other end of that health spectrum.
Our physical and emotional environment has a major impact on our wellbeing and sense of hope. For most of the planet, that environment is now primarily the city (3). As if we always knew its importance, several towns and cities are actually called ‘Hope’.
However, mental health can be twice as bad in cities than non-urban settings (4); dense urban populations are paradoxically a place of loneliness (as bad for you as smoking (5)), with higher prescribing rates linked to anxiety and depression. Yet city-life can also confer a psychological robustness, ask us to deal with difference and therefore become more tolerant, build community but also allow for anonymity, to reinvent oneself away from the village curtain-twitchers (6).
Cities are the solution not the problem, but our understanding of the emotional impacts of this primary human habitat remains very much in its infancy (7). As Shakespeare instinctively understood, “what is the city but the people (8)”, yet extraordinarily, psychology, the discipline most focused on understanding people’s emotion and behaviour, is almost absent from urban debate.
This is changing and where work has taken place, the results suggest applying tools from psychology, neuroscience and psychiatry can be transformative, including the following examples.
A group of economic geographers and psychologists conducted a national survey of personality types across the UK working with the BBC, discovering a strong link between places with predominantly entrepreneurial personality traits and higher economic performance (9).
Neuroscience research by London-based Centriclab encountered increased levels of PTSD in some urban neighbourhoods, where the ‘slow violence’ of deprivation was as tangible as a sudden traumatic event.
The ‘Charta of Neurourbanism’, based on empirical research led by German psychiatrist Mazda Adli, provides concrete solutions across nine policy areas to improve urban mental health.
In Coventry, myself and urbanist Charles Landry working with the University and local authority conducted psychologically framed interviews, workshops and surveys which produced new possibilities for the redevelopment of the city centre. We also appointed a ‘psychotherapist in residence’ for the city, examining its life history and asking, if these things happened to a person, what would the impact be, how might a therapist respond? This helped reveal a different narrative for the city’s future.
Thomas Heatherwick Studio’s impactful Humanise campaign and excellent Radio 4 series ‘Building Soul’, and Milan Polytechnic’s Congruence Festival on neuroscience, architecture, design and space (10) are further, very recent examples. These all point toward a growing trend to use psychology to seek person-centred solutions to urban challenges, but which still has a long way to go.
For urban leadership, hope remains a critical tool in deploying these and indeed any solutions. A leader is a dealer in hope said Napoleon, perhaps not entirely the leadership model we want, so we might temper this with Nelson Mandela’s may your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.
So what could leaders and policy makers do in this space?
An interesting question emerges: Could we do more than lessen the effects of badly made places? Could we, perhaps, shape places of nurture and healing, build community resilience, foster hope - and enjoy the results of this in improved resilience of both people and places? Not just through design, but across a nexus of economic, health and other policies. This should be a central question for leaders and policy makers.
Psychologist Carol Ryff set out six developmental factors needed to become psychologically resilient, whole people, which can be seen both as fostering hope and a roadmap to its realisation (11). Using her brilliant work as a platform, we redefined these as six components of the ‘Psychologically Resilient City’ (12), (Carol Ryffs original headings italicised), set out as questions for residents and place leaders.
The possibility for improvement (personal growth): Does the city display empathy, a sense of wanting everyone to do well? Are basic wellbeing factors catered for to encourage: connection; activity; curiosity; learning; giving?
The ability to deal with difference and find connection (positive relationships): Does the city operate interculturally, are there activities that encourage communities to bond and to mix? Are neighbourhoods designed to create interactions, walkability, build trust?
Reflecting the courage of the city’s convictions (autonomy): does design create places that are locally authentic, reflect aspiration and values? Is there excellence in the everyday, not just the iconic?
Nurturing deep-seated needs (environmental mastery): Does the city seek to enable feelings of: security; belonging; self-esteem and respect; a right to cultural identity; ability to participate; and sense of fairness? Is there access to natural resources and quiet space, places that cyclically mark the passing of time?
Self-awareness, knowing where the city wants to go, and driven to help others (purpose in life): do city aspirations relate to an explicit plan for a better future and a desire to help everyone share in it? Does the city express a shared narrative rooted in local identity and culture?
Balancing citizenship, self and community (self-acceptance): Is leadership building a sense of citizenship that balances a shared identity of the city with those of different communities and individuals, expressing that in its design and other policies? Do citizens feel listened to?
The city communicates through every fibre of its being, its physical and social structures, governance, its life and animation. These things combine in a powerful way that impacts directly upon the psychology of its people, which in turn impact on place, so creating a cycle: an urban psyche, but also a sense of hope, without which we can’t know what we want and simply don’t have the ability to reach for it even if we did.
Place leaders in the UK have a huge opportunity to be at the vanguard of this emerging approach to policy making, place, community and economic development, to lead a new wave of urban psychological experimentation and to reap the benefits. It’s already happening. The results are remarkable and deliver not just a powerful message of hope, but more of the tools to achieve what it is that we hope for.
Join the Conversation: How Can We Build Places of Hope?
At Recurve, we believe that hope plays a vital role in the revitalisation of our cities, towns and regions. We plan to publish further reflections on this topic over the coming months and would welcome your views.
How is your place fostering an authentic shared narrative rooted in local identity?
What new possibilities for urban development emerge when we focus on psychological resilience?
How can we, as leaders, become "dealers in hope" for our communities?
Share your thoughts in the comments, or email us at hello@recurve.solutions.
Additional references
Burton, N; Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions; Acheron Press; UK; 2015
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259011332030002X
Krabbendam, L; van Os, J (2005) Schizophrenia and urbanicity: a major environmental influence-conditional on genetic risk; In Schizophrenia Bulletin; Epub 2005 Sep 8
Landry, C; Murray, C; Psychology and the City: The hidden dimension (2017); Comedia
Shakespeare’s Coriolanus
Rentfrow PJ, Jokela M, Lamb ME (2015) Regional Personality Differences in Great Britain. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0122245. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.012224
Information available on www.urbanpsyche.org
Ryff, C; Keyes, C (1995) The Structure of Psychological Wellbeing Revisited; In: Journal of personality and social psychology; Volume 69, Issue 4, pp719; American Psychological Association
Landry, C; Murray, C; Psychology and the City: the hidden dimension (2017); Comedia; A Toolkit For Psychologically Resilient Cities; pp71