Miquel Lacasta, lecturer in the Project Area of the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture and winner of the National Urban Planning Award, stressed that there is no city in the world that is “one hundred percent healthy” and only Copenhagen, Vancouver and Portland “have set themselves the goal to become one”.

To celebrate World Urbanism on 8 November, Lacasta decided to promote a “regenerative urbanism” that creates  “more sustainable, resilient and supportive” cities and areas. He explained that this concept takes into account “scientific conclusions that come from trials and advances in neuroscience and therefore focuses on the mental health of its inhabitants”. 

According to the architect, “it has been demonstrated that mental health has many repercussions on diseases of the body, and in recent years, neuroscience has explained the role of neurotransmitters and hormones that activate the human brain in the development of digestive pathologies, cancer or Alzheimer's disease, making them worse, preventing them or even helping them heal.” 

In this regard, the UIC Barcelona lecturer and co-founder of Archikubik insisted on the need to transfer this knowledge to the field of design and “quantify positive strategies when deciding forms, colours, spaces, green areas, relations between the interior and exterior, or the role of the ground floor, to give some examples.” “The idea is to have the ability to design urban and architectural spaces ‘low in cortisol’ or ‘high in oxytocin’ because the very act of not living in a healthy and regenerative city has a tremendous impact on well-being, mental health and many physiological repercussions. It has a huge impact on solidarity between citizens, on individual opportunities, on their valued potential educational and creative qualities and on individual and collective emotional stability,” he added.  

Natural spaces that improve the ecosystem

Addressing the importance of human contact with nature to protect mental health, Lacasta stressed that a regenerative city “is designed based on the desire to recover existing natural spaces or to propose new natural spaces that have a great impact on the improvement of ecosystems.”

The specialist and co-founding partner of Archikubik, has insisted that the ultimate goal in the improvement of a society should be according to the geographical, cultural, economic, social and technological context”, so “a regenerative city in India cannot be projected in the same way as a regenerative city in Guatemala.” 

Although the concept is still “very new” in his opinion, Lacasta assures us that it will be “cause for debate” in the coming years within the field of architecture.