% reviewed paper Designing Non-Depressive Urban Built Environment: Case Study of Damietta City, Egypt Mona Maria, Hany Ayad, Rania Raslan, Salwa Tobar (Master Student. Mona Maria, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria university, Lotfy El-Sied st. off Gamal Abd El-Naser – Alexandria, Egypt,
[email protected]) (Prof.Dr. Hany M. Ayad, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria university, Lotfy El-Sied st. off Gamal Abd El- Naser – Alexandria, Egypt,
[email protected]) (Dr. Rania Raslan, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria university, Lotfy El-Sied st. off Gamal Abd El-Naser – Alexandria, Egypt,
[email protected]) (Prof.Dr. Salwa Tobar, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura university, Algomheria st.kesm 2– Mansoura, Egypt, tobar
[email protected]) 1 ABSTRACT Maintaining mental well-being in urban built environments with the help of technology in cities is a huge challenging trend, especially with the increasing number of people living in cities. Nowadays, urban life style has raised the risk of anxiety and mood disorders by 21% and 39% respectively. This paper aims at investigating the relationship between several attributes of the urban built environment with mental health and raising the issue of how mental health can be improved through urban design. Basically, mental health depends on human inner feelings and emotions reacting from surrounding environments. The study is based on analysing the individual experience of people and their lifestyle in several neighbourhoods of Damietta City, Egypt by using Hamilton Depression Scale as an instrument to evaluate the severity of depressive symptoms. The attributes of the built environment in those neighbourhoods are investigated using geographic information systems (GIS), on a sample of 445 individuals distributed in four different city areas.