Salutogenese – Das Jahrbuch der KIT-Fakultät für Architektur 2021

The Urban Emotions Initiative —
An Element for a Stress-Free City?
Dr. Peter Zeile
The concepts of salutogenesis and pathogenesis, which are
contrary in themselves, unite despite all differences in the
urban context the idea that a liveable city is characterised
by a healthy population with a correspondingly positive attitude.
The Healthy City is representative of this approach.
The vision is, of course, that positive health effects should
be included in urban planning. Conversely, planners must
always identify negative effects within the urban body
caused by urban infrastructures and facilities and try to
minimise them in terms of hazard prevention. Objectively,
a large number of DIN standards, legal regulations, etc. are
available for this purpose, which can be used to measure
whether a dangerous situation exists. But what about when
people's subjective perception of safety is impaired? Are such
effects measurable beyond the classical survey methods?
Can (negative) emotions in urban space be measured, localised
and quantified as a basis for planning decisions with
the help of modern human sensor technology? Using examples
from the Urban Emotions Initiative, the contribution
describes different application scenarios and discusses in detail
the strengths as well as the limitations of emotion measurement
for identifying stress hotspots within the city.
In detail, these are emotion measurements of cyclists, pedestrians
and handicapped persons. Especially in the context
of cycling, the method has proven to be very promising. The
relationship between cyclists and pedestrians is being investigated
in the new research project Cape Reviso.
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