YOUR EMOTIONAL CITY!

What is Citizen Science?

Citizen Science is research conducted with participation from the general public, nonprofessional researchers, or participants in science, social science, urban planning, and many other disciplines. Citizen science can be used as a methodology where public volunteers help in collecting and classifying data, improving the scientific community's capacity. Participation in citizen science projects also educates the public about the scientific process and increases awareness about different topics.

The citizen science strategy of “Deine Emotionale Stadt" (Your Emotional City) centers on creating a participatory platform where citizens play an integral role in the project’s design, implementation, and outcomes, making it a project not just for citizens but also with them at its core.

Utilizing Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) methods, the project invites citizens to contribute to real-time, context-sensitive data collection about their emotional experiences within urban spaces. This citizen-centered approach seeks to improve mental health by understanding the emotional effects of various urban settings, bridging academia, medical institutions, society, and policy into ongoing dialogue.

The project adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining psychology, urban planning, sociology, and digital tools to create a holistic framework for assessing urban mental well-being. Rather than simply viewing citizen science as a recruitment tool, "Deine Emotionale Stadt" makes it the project's foundation, fostering active community involvement and shaping research outcomes to reflect the lived experiences of the population.

You can find more information on our Citizen Science project for Berlin here.

To see our international collaborations with Bangalore (India) and Santiago de Chile (Chile) click here.

Recent research has identified various environmental, social, and density factors that can significantly impact an individual's mental health. With the data collected in the citizen science project “Deine Emotionale Stadt” (Your Emotional City), we want to find out how our urban environment affects our psychological well-being.

To do this, we use complex statistical procedures and various methods to eliminate disruptive factors and isolate factors that particularly influence our emotions in the city. By analyzing these factors through multilevel regression analysis, we can gain deeper insights into how our surroundings and social interactions contribute to our overall mental well-being.

Some key hypotheses derived from this analysis highlight these important associations:

Deine Emotionale Stadt: The Citizen Science Project to create a city map of emotions

Social Factors

• Is feeling accepted by surrounding people positively associated with mental well-being?

• Is being with people who are not close significantly associated with mental well-being?

• Is being lonely negatively associated with mental well-being?

Environmental Factors

• Is perceived environmental beauty & Interestingness positively associated with mental well-being?

• Is perceived environmental safety positively associated with mental well-being?

• Is perceived environmental greenness associated with mental well-being?

Density Factors

• Is lack of personal space negatively associated with mental well-being?

• Is perceived crowding associated with mental well-being?

Become An Urban Researcher - Participate!

If you would like to participate in the project as an urban researcher and join us in collecting data on stress and well-being locations in Berlin, you can download the app “Citizen Scientist” from the App Store, Google Play, or by scanning this QR code.

“Your Emotional City” is a joint project of Interdisziplinäres Forum Neurourbanistik e. V., Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Futurium – House of the Futures and Open Data Informationsstelle Berlin. Funded by the Berlin University Alliance as part of the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments.