How Urban Environments Shape Our Emotional Physiology
Psychophysiology Urban Environment

How Urban Environments Shape Our Emotional Physiology

We often think of cities as fixed backdrops, but our bodies are constantly reacting to the spaces we move through. A new pilot study from Milan strapped wearable sensors to 59 people and sent them on a walk through an urban campus — revealing that specific architectural features shift our nervous systems in measurable, predictable ways.

Published: February 16, 2026

Why Cities Are an Emotional Experience

Urban design shapes how we feel in ways that go far beyond aesthetics. Noise levels, building height, the presence of trees, the openness of the sky — these aren't just visual details. They are stimuli that our autonomic nervous system (the internal control system managing involuntary functions like heart rate and sweating) responds to continuously, whether we're aware of it or not [1, 2]. Research in environmental psychology has shown that natural settings tend to support stress recovery, while highly fragmented or crowded urban environments can have the opposite effect [3, 4]. But until recently, most of what we knew about how cities make people feel came from self-reported surveys — asking people how they felt rather than measuring it directly.

A new study published in Frontiers in Psychology by Maninetti and colleagues at Politecnico di Milano takes a different approach [1]. By combining continuous wearable physiological monitoring with psychological self-reports and GPS-tracked location data, the researchers created what amounts to an emotional map of a ten-minute urban walk — measuring not just what people said they felt, but what their bodies revealed beneath conscious awareness.

Inside the Research

The study was conducted at the Università di Milano Bicocca campus in northern Milan — a district with an unusual history. Originally the main industrial hub of the Pirelli company, the area was redeveloped in the 1980s into a mixed-use neighborhood combining academic, residential, and commercial functions. The researchers designed a walking route from the Greco-Pirelli train station to the campus's central Piazza della Scienza, simulating a typical commuter journey. A team of urban planners and environmental psychologists selected seven observation points along the route, each chosen for distinct spatial properties: an outdoor café, a station square, a traffic-light crossing, a square entrance, an archway passage framed by university buildings, a corner with benches and greenery, and a covered tramway stop.

Fifty-nine participants (mean age 26, balanced for gender and neighborhood familiarity) walked the route individually while wearing a physiological recording system. An electrocardiogram (ECG) captured heart activity via three chest electrodes, and electrodermal activity (EDA) was recorded through finger electrodes on the non-dominant hand — both sampled at 256 Hz. At each observation point, participants stopped, absorbed the environment, then used a mobile app called City Sense to photograph the scene and complete a brief psychological survey rating their emotional valence (how pleasant or unpleasant they felt) and arousal (how activated or calm). Trained operators followed at a distance without interacting.

Two physiological signals were central to the analysis. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) — the millisecond-level fluctuations between consecutive heartbeats — serves as a window into autonomic nervous system balance. Higher HRV generally indicates greater parasympathetic ("rest and digest") activity, while lower HRV suggests sympathetic ("fight or flight") dominance. Electrodermal Activity (EDA) measures tiny changes in skin conductance caused by sweat gland activity controlled by the sympathetic nervous system — essentially an involuntary "arousal meter" that spikes when encountering stimulating or stressful stimuli.

To synthesize these streams into something interpretable, the researchers developed an Emotional Index that combines heart rate and skin conductance data and maps them onto Russell's Circumplex Model — a psychological framework that plots emotions along two axes (valence and arousal) to produce a continuous wheel of 16 emotional states ranging from "happy" and "excited" through "stressed" and "sad" to "calm" and "serene" [5]. This produced polar histogram visualizations showing which emotions dominated at each location — the study's key methodological contribution.

What the Walk Revealed

The results showed clear, statistically significant shifts in autonomic activity as participants moved through different urban spaces. The first two observation points — the outdoor café and the station square — were characterized by predominantly parasympathetic activation: higher vagal tone, lower sympathetic arousal, indicating relative relaxation. Both locations featured open spaces with unobstructed views of the sky, which prior research has linked to lower stress [6].

As participants entered the university campus and reached the central square, the pattern reversed. Sympathetic activation increased significantly, with the square corner outlook triggering the strongest sympathetic response of the entire walk. This location was enclosed by tall six-story red buildings that limited visible sky — an architectural feature known to reduce relaxation. Yet it also featured benches encouraging social interaction and some nearby greenery, which appeared to boost emotional valence even as physiological arousal rose. In other words, participants' bodies were more activated, but the emotional quality of that activation leaned positive rather than stressed.

The archway passage told a different story. This location, partially blocked by a construction barrier from inactive renovation works, showed notably lower valence and arousal compared to its neighbors on either side of the square. With no visible social spaces, greenery, or open sky, the duller view measurably dampened mood — demonstrating how even small-scale urban features can shift emotional physiology within meters of one another.

Across all seven observation points, the dominant physiological emotion was "happy." But several locations — the train station, the archway passage, and the tramway stop — showed a secondary peak at "upset," suggesting that these spaces simultaneously triggered competing emotional responses. Walking segments between stops shifted emotional states from "excited" and "elated" early in the route toward "happy" and "contented" as the walk progressed, though some transitions also registered "sad" and "upset".

When Your Body and Mind Disagree

Perhaps the study's most thought-provoking finding was the divergence between what participants' bodies showed and what they consciously reported. Psychological self-reports clustered around "excited" and "elated" at nearly every location, while the physiological data revealed "happy" as the dominant state with considerably more emotional variety, including those secondary "upset" peaks that never surfaced in the surveys.

This gap between conscious appraisal and automatic physiological reaction is not unique to this study — the authors cite several prior experiments showing similar patterns — but it carries a practical implication worth noting. Self-reports capture what people think they feel after conscious reflection. Wearable sensors capture pre-conscious, automatic responses happening in real time. Neither tells the full story alone, but together they reveal emotional complexity that either method would miss. A location might feel fine when you think about it, while your nervous system is quietly registering stress — or vice versa.

What This Means for Urban Design — and for Wearables

The researchers are careful to frame this as a pilot study — a methodology validation rather than sweeping conclusions about all cities. With 59 participants walking a single route through one campus, the findings are suggestive rather than definitive. The team plans to repeat the protocol after planned renovations to Piazza della Scienza are completed, which will offer a direct before-and-after comparison of how design changes alter psychophysiological responses.

That said, the specific environmental features that correlated with physiological shifts offer actionable design insights. Unobstructed sky views promoted relaxation. Tall enclosing buildings increased sympathetic arousal. Benches and social spaces boosted positive emotional valence. Vegetation had context-dependent effects — prior research cited in the paper found that greenery can actually increase stress when it obstructs visibility, suggesting that how natural elements are integrated matters as much as their mere presence [6]. And construction barriers or visual disorder demonstrably dampened mood.

The broader implication is a shift from designing cities based on static indicators like density and land use toward incorporating the lived emotional experience of inhabitants. The Emotional Index methodology — combining continuous physiological monitoring with georeferenced psychological data — offers a way to identify "emotional hotspots" where urban design either supports or undermines wellbeing. As wearable sensors become smaller, cheaper, and more integrated into daily life, the possibility of citizens contributing their own psychophysiological data to urban planning decisions moves closer to reality.

References

  1. Maninetti C. et al. "An integrative psychophysiological approach for emotional assessment in outdoor urban settings", Frontiers in Psychology 16 (2026) 1690851. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1690851
  2. Aspinall P., Mavros P., Coyne R. & Roe J. "The urban brain: analysing outdoor physical activity with mobile EEG", British Journal of Sports Medicine 49 (2015) 272–276. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2012-091877
  3. Ulrich R.S., Simons R.F., Losito B.D., Fiorito E., Miles M.A. & Zelson M. "Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments", Journal of Environmental Psychology 11 (1991) 201–230. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0272-4944(05)80184-7
  4. Berman M.G., Jonides J. & Kaplan S. "The cognitive benefits of interacting with nature", Psychological Science 19 (2008) 1207–1212. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02225.x
  5. Russell J.A. & Pratt G. "A description of the affective quality attributed to environments", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38 (1980) 311–322. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.38.2.311
  6. Zhang Z., Zhuo K., Wei W., Li F., Yin J. & Xu L. "Emotional responses to the visual patterns of urban streets: evidence from physiological and subjective indicators", International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (2021) 9677. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18189677