Cities present a paradox. On average, they offer better health facilities than rural areas, along with greater economic, cultural, and social opportunities, while their residents have higher incomes and yet, on average, those residents experience higher rates of mental ill-health. In The Urban Brain, Nikolas Rose and Des Fitzgerald aim to make some sense of this paradox, and more generally to show how we should try to understand the effects of cities on mental health.

Their initial tactic is to follow migrants. Over a century ago, at a time when large numbers of international and domestic migrants were moving to North American cities, observers pondered what Georg Simmel spoke about as ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’. Recognizing the strengths and limitations of those, often speculative, judgements, Rose and Fitzgerald argue that it is useful to revisit the question.

To do this, the authors work hard. They dig through diverse literatures in order to suggest how we might best bridge the fraught divide between the social and life sciences. Fraught because for decades it has informed the often hot debates about the relative importance of nature and nurture, environment and genetic biology. Reasonably, they aim for and explore the middle ground. Frustratingly, as they show, this is a complex arena with few firm conclusions. Their main contribution is to insist that we need to dig deeper than psychosocial experiences, of which we are conscious, in order to uncover the ‘neurosocial’, the connections that shape our outlook, but which remain beneath awareness.

In the opening three chapters, they focus on immigrants. First, considering classic writers including Simmel, Robert Park, and, interestingly, W.E.B. Du Bois, they discuss the way writers in Britain, Europe, and the United States made sense of the immigrant and urban experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They then turn to the present scene, bringing together the disparate, but more analytic, literatures on migration and mental health. Then, intriguingly, they turn to Shanghai, considering the motives, experience and outlook of recent rural-urban migrants.

In the remaining three chapters, they step back to review and discuss what we know about stress, the root of most mental health problems. So much of the work on this subject has been undertaken in experimental settings, and not necessarily with humans, and the authors discuss its possible translation into everyday life. In chapter five, they apply their argument to the city, considering what they refer to as ‘the urban brain’. Then, in the final chapter, they consider how such deeply personal considerations might connect with larger discussions about our ‘right to the city’. Here, they bring in the arguments of writers such as Herbert Marcuse, Henri Lefebvre, and David Harvey.

The main strength of The Urban Brain is the way the authors have brought together disparate literatures in order to make their case. I especially appreciated the way they recognized and showed the historical depth of some of the relevant debates. This helps to put our current understanding—with its strengths and limitations—in context. The language has changed. We may see problems with older discourses, but rather than feeling superior, we should be alerted to the probability that in another generation or so, people may criticize what we now take for granted.

One feature of The Urban Brain—that it is, in effect, an extended literature review—is also a problem. The detailed survey and discussion can become exhausting, especially with regard to the main line of argument, which becomes repetitive. Then, too, the writing often mirrors that of so many of the authors discussed: it becomes turgid, with jargon and a succession of long sentences. I craved, especially, an introduction and/or conclusion that made key points concisely and in simple prose.

Turning to the content, a limitation is that the authors—again, like so many of those whose works they discuss—concentrate on the negative aspects of migration and, more generally, of city living: the stresses and struggles, the inequalities and frustrations that damage mental health. Rose and Fitzgerald are well aware that urban and migrant experiences are diverse. Early on, they speak of a ‘vital sociology’ which ‘insists on understanding the urban as an array of lively ecologies, sometimes convivial, turbulent, and joyful, but sometimes solitary, unpleasant and demanding’ (p. 17). But it’s the ‘unpleasant’ that they focus on, along with the migrants who ‘often occupy marginal, racialized, and stigmatized localities, and so are disproportionately exposed to the vectors that research has shown to be associated with mental distress’ (p. 201). But what about those convivial and joyful features of urban life: the enjoyable stimulation; the economic, social, and cultural opportunities; the possibility of connecting with new communities? And indeed, we know that, up to a point, stress can be valuable. That should be part of any assessment of the urban experience, contributing to creativity in various spheres, including arts and technology. Indeed, that’s why many migrants head for the city.

Finally, putting style and content together, it is a pity that the authors do not attempt to provide, even speculatively, an assessment of what cities do to our mental health. They indicate a way to think about this, along with the various authors whose work suggests how to tackle the question by focusing on ‘specific pathways and mechanisms’ (p. 202). That’s useful. But now we need an accessible and inspiring, even if speculative, synthesis.

Richard Harris, McMaster University

Nikolas Rose and Des Fitzgerald (eds.) 2022: The Urban Brain. Mental Health in the Vital City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Views expressed in this section are independent and do not represent the opinion of the editors.