Towards anxiety alleviating streetscape design: a comprehensive literature review

Anxiety, a prevalent mental health issue amongst the urban population, has risen in the past decade. Currently, cities are more than often referred to as 'anxious', implying the observed anxiety levels of residents. Residents engage with almost every scale of space in the city as part of their daily activities. However, it is established that one of the most vital everyday urban spaces is the 'street'. It may further be conjectured that 'streets' and 'streetscape design' are associated with the anxiety levels of urban residents. This study attempts to explore the plausible association between streetscape design and the anxiety levels of residents through a comprehensive literature review. The search strategy involved databases, namely Science Direct, PubMed, MDPI, and JSTOR, and only high-quality journal's peer-reviewed articles were included. The data was extracted from 25 shortlisted articles for the review. It concludes with the theoretical framework of the impact of streetscape elements on state anxiety, highlighting the direct and indirect impact through plausible mediators such as safety and personal space. Conclusion also includes an inventory of these elements categorized into positive and negative impactors on residents' anxiety levels, further intending to guide the design of streetscapes for alleviating anxiety in the future.