Text

This talk addresses two complementary pathways: how (a) aesthetic qualities of urban environments and (b) encounters with public artworks shape how connected, open, and safe people feel. Although research has documented well-being effects of art engagement, indirect dimensions such as belonging, community cohesion, and perceived social connection remain comparatively understudied.

This talk synthesizes findings from three empirical studies addressing this gap.

First, a 2 × 2 field experiment placed a temporary public art installation in two contrasting Berlin streetscapes: a green pedestrian-oriented promenade and a traffic-oriented wide boulevard. Art increased beauty and invitingness at both sites and uniquely enhanced belonging in the more demanding traffic-oriented context. Mediation analyses showed that beauty, and to a lesser degree interest, accounted for art’s effects on happiness, invitingness, and willingness to meet others, indicating that public art can enrich both aesthetic and social qualities of urban space.

Second, a pre-post study of a sidewalk-level neighborhood exhibition demonstrated increases in neighborhood connectedness and improved well-being after brief art engagement, with cognitive appraisal and felt alignment with artist intentions predicting the degree of change.

Third, ongoing ecologically momentary assessment research examines how momentary perceptions of beauty, interest, and the presence of public art relate to loneliness, social connection, safety, and well-being during everyday movement through the city.

Together, these studies provide converging evidence that public art and urban aesthetics can function as infrastructures of care, fostering belonging and supporting social well-being in urban environments.