Urban landscapes are becoming the main ecosystem for human life. Given that urban living can be associated with poor psychological health, one specific challenge faced by cities is related to psychological well-being. The current essay discusses how restorative environments research can offer significant insights into the strategy of healthy cities by guiding the exploration of their restorative outcomes. We propose a theoretical model elucidating the physical and symbolic features of urban settings that can aid processes of active and passive restoration—based on theory and evidence from restorative environments research. Future research should consider urban psychological restoration in a broader sense and lend greater relevance to the exploration of the restorative potential of the full range of urban built settings.

Over recent decades, the study of psychological restoration has attracted a considerable amount of interest within and without the boundaries of environmental psychology, with most of the work focused on analyzing restoration in natural contexts. However, little attention has been paid to the (possible) restorative potential of urban settings, as they have usually been expected not to be restorative and to present some elements that might imply negative health outcomes in the short and long term. In this field study, our aim was to evaluate restoration in urban squares. To this end, we measured participants' attentional and affective states both before and after spending half an hour in an urban square. A sample of 46 subjects contemplated and walked through one of the two selected squares that differed in restorative potential (PRS). Analyses revealed a statistically significant increase in cognitive performance and a decrease in negative affect in both squares. They also showed that participants reported greater stress recovery rates in one of the settings. These results support the idea that cities can be potentially restorative and justify the relevance of a research area focused on the urban designs, which may offer psychological benefits to urban citizens.