Stress and the City

Forecasts for 2050 say that about two-thirds of the world's population will be living in cities. Yet is it not precisely these cities, with their deafening noise, their hustle and bustle, their anonymity and the problem of isolation, not to mention exhaust fumes, that make us sick in body and soul? 

The psychiatrist and stress researcher Mazda Adli has been looking into these issues for years within the "Stress in the City" project at the Charité in Berlin; he has developed a smartphone app to measure stress, has chosen an interdisciplinary approach for his book and argues in favour of the creation of places that are not built up so that in spite of high stress levels cities remain worth living in.