From generic to salutogenic urbanism: Evidence of the landmark paradox and the role of biodiversity and walkability in mental health

Abstract

Public place walkability is central to health-oriented urban planning. Facing a global polycrisis (climate, mental health, physical activity, and biodiversity challenges) salutogenic environmental research is crucial for cross-sector recommendations. Yet, evidence integrating psychological and urban planning perspectives remains limited. Our study determines how urban design influences psychological integration in public places, which dispositional versus environmental variables most strongly predict psychological outcomes, and what human-centred recommendations may inform urban prototyping. A novel experimental design operationalised environmental variables: biodiversity proportion, landmark salience, and walkable surface. We assessed nature connectedness, sense of coherence, and generalised anxiety as dispositions, and well-being, sense of coherence-meaningfulness, inclusion of nature in self, and place meaning as situational outcomes. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that walkable surface and high-quality biodiverse greenery proportion (rather than quantity) significantly predicted sense of coherence-meaningfulness, with walkable surface emerging as the strongest predictor of well-being. Landmark salience proved to be the most consistent negative predictor across all outcomes, including place meaning-essentialism. Evaluating the Person–environment (P × E) interactions showed that only nature connectedness moderated vignette impacts. These results highlight the salutogenic potential of walkable, biophilic cityscapes and reveal the detrimental effects of excessive landmark dominance, suggesting that pedestrian-oriented affordances should be prioritised over hierarchy-enforcing, car-oriented ones. Beyond simulated empirical results, we propose the Landmark Paradox as a conceptual interpretation of negative landmark effects and introduce the Saluto-Adaptive City Framework (SACF) as a broader theory of how urban environments might function as dynamic health-regulating systems. Our findings have transdisciplinary implications for public places.