Gray Matter: Scent and the City

SUFFERING from writer's block? Try sniffing rotting apples.

This seemed to work for the 18th-century poet Friedrich Schiller, who kept the decaying fruit in his study because he felt the scent stimulated creativity. Though Goethe thought this a little nutty, a couple of hundred years later the University of Arizona psychologist Gary Schwartz found that Schiller might have been on to something. The scent of spiced apples, Prof. Schwartz discovered, significantly lowered the blood pressure of test subjects.

The therapeutic properties of scent have been cultivated since antiquity. They were a particular fascination of medieval monks in their cloistered gardens. Now modern science is revealing the wisdom of ancient practices.

In 2009, medical researchers at Tottori University in Japan found that exposing Alzheimer's patients to rosemary and lemon in the morning and lavender and orange in the evening resulted in improved cognitive functions. A 2006 study by researchers at the New York University Medical Center discovered that postoperative patients exposed to the smell of lavender reported a higher satisfaction rate with pain control. And a 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology reported that cancer patients who received massage with aromatic oils experienced a significant improvement in anxiety and depression.

By contrast, last year researchers at the University of Dresden Medical School in Germany found that people without a sense of smell — anosmics, they're called — generally were more socially insecure and had a higher risk of depression.

While these findings have obvious implications for health care, the opportunities for architecture and urban planning are particularly intriguing. Designers are trained to focus mostly on the visual, but the science of design could significantly expand designers' sensory palette. Call it medicinal urbanism.

Fragrant herbs and flowers are already becoming common in healing gardens — for example, the jasmine bushes planted outside the windows of the Laguna Honda hospital and rehabilitation center in San Francisco. The aroma of basil, thyme, mint, lilac and lavender can be extraordinarily beneficial, relieving stress, headaches and inflammation and improving sleep, digestion and blood circulation.

While New York isn't exactly known for its pleasant odors, the High Line elevated park is covered with over 300 species of plants, many of which have distinctly pleasing scents. At a certain time of year, the brilliant purple asters known as Raydon's Favorite fill the air with a minty perfume — nature's air freshener.

According to a 2005 study by Dutch researchers, people tidy up more when there's a hint of citrus in the air. Imagine public places filled with aromatic blossoming trees and flowers, discouraging people from littering. A fragrant city is a clean city.

We associate so many places with their aromatic landscapes — the eucalyptus groves of Northern California, for example — and whole cities can be defined by their scent. Streetscapes fill with the aroma of roasting coffee spilling from Seattle's cafes, or the bouquet of fruit and flowers at Amsterdam's markets, or the sugar and cinnamon wafting out of Viennese pastry shops. The Spanish city of San Sebastián, set in a deep cove ringed by cliffs, is one of the most visually arresting places I know, but its most unforgettable feature has to be the distinctive scent of sea and sand lingering on the old fishing village at its heart. Tourists follow their noses.

Or run away from them. Earlier this year, the beach community of La Jolla, Calif., made national news during its battle with the increasingly putrid smell of bird droppings. While the foul odor was turning away tourists, biologists called it the smell of success, since environmental protections were luring endangered fowl back to the area. In New Zealand, natural emissions of hydrogen sulfide blanket the city of Rotorua with the stench of rotten eggs, earning it the nickname Sulfur City. Locals suffer from asthma and other respiratory ailments at a far greater rate than do people in neighboring regions.

That the scent of a city should have a potent impact shouldn't surprise us. Scent has a direct link to the brain, acting on the limbic system, triggering the release of endorphins. Smell is the most primal of our senses.

This powerful source of pleasure could spawn a whole new field of design.

Lance Hosey, the chief sustainability officer of the architecture and design firm RTKL, is the author of "The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design."

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