IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York
Abstract
Increasing urbanization indicates that cities are an attractive place to live. At the same time, due to the number of potential stressors, urban populations are more vulnerable to stress and less resilient to it than rural residents. In recent months, the COVID-19 pandemic has become an additional source of stress for urban residents. As long-term stress has a serious impact on their physical and mental health, it is necessary to take measures to reduce it. This requires deepening our knowledge of the threatening – as well as health-protecting – factors of urban life, and then transforming cities to make them more resilient to stress, and thus healthier and more livable. Since literature shows that urban residents’ stress levels increase with city size, one of the goals of the study will be to verify this thesis. A comparative analysis will be conducted for 3 Polish cities of different sizes in terms of: (1) the level of stress of urban residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, (2) its sources and effects, (3) the influence of the residential environment on the level of stress of residents, and (4) the identification in the structure of cities of places that intensify and reduce stress. The analyses will be based on the results of geo-surveys. Attention will also be paid to the role of urban greenery in health prevention and stress mitigation, and the need to re-construct the spatial structure of cities taking into account the principles of biophilia.
Geographer by profession. She works at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, where she heads the Department of Spatial Planning and Urban Design. She is a well-known and recognizable researcher both in Poland and abroad. Her interests have focused on the city, problems of urban development, and urbanization processes and models, showing the main trends in the development policy of contemporary cities. Her most recent publications concern the organicist conception of the city, urban green fragmentation, planning aspects of urban resilience, and the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. Ewa Lechowska – Works as adiunkt at the University of Lodz. By profession, she is an urban planner with many years of experience and a real estate appraiser. Her research interests focus on issues related to spatial planning, urban resilience to spatial aging, revitalization and spatial analysis using GIS
Prof. UAM Dr. Magdalena Wdowicka – spatial planner. She works at Adam Mickiewicz University. She specializes in research on the problems of urban development, spatial planning and strategic planning, as well as the processes of globalization of the economy and spatial organization of the activities of transnational corporations.
Dr. Bogusz Modrzewski – a certified, active graphic designer and architect. Assistant Professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. He specializes in issues of urban composition, especially quantitative and qualitative shaping of residential neighborhoods, perception, evaluation and urban codification of the built environment, and issues of environmental psychology, including biophilia and shaping biophilic architecture and biophilic cities.
Dr Kamila Sikorska-Podyma – architect and urban planner, adjunct professor at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and active architect. She specializes in research on issues of urban development and safety, including in particular fire safety, urban planning, urban and architectural design, and revitalization. He has many years of practical experience in the field of architectural design.
Dr. Marta Szejnfeld – an architect and urban planner by education, as well as a civil engineer. She is currently an adiunkt at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. Her research interests revolve around issues related to the modeling of urban spatial structures, contemporary urbanization processes, spatial planning, and the use of digital spatial data to support analysis, design and urban management.
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Wednesday 14th June, 2023