Mental health as determining factor of urban district’s character: Case study Bratislava – the Pentagon

Drug use and drug addiction have a high prevalence in the population, which has been widely documented since the 1980s. According to the United Nations, the physical environment in which we live is one of the strongest determinants of our health. In the case of drug abuse concentration in a particular urban space, one of the points to consider is the architectural and urban form of the location. In the Slovak context, a significant representative of concentrated drug activity is a part of the Medzi Jarkami housing estate, nicknamed the “Pentagon”. In an effort to eradicate drug activity, local residents fortified the Pentagon, changing its urban landscape and furthering its ghettoisation. Although drug abuse is a criminal act, it is imperative to acknowledge that drug addiction is a mental illness. Therefore, it is not sufficient to look at spaces such as the Pentagon from a criminal perspective but also from that of mental health. Our study aims to explore the connection between the residents’ mental health and the quality of the urban structure they live in. We performed a urban design analysis, utilizing on-site participant observation and structural interviews supplemented by desktop research. The case study analysis proved that the mental status of the local residents has an essential impact on the development of urban neighbourhoods. A number of environmental stressors were detected as present in the built structure. Furthermore, there is the stigmatization of whole urban districts caused by a high incidence of drug addiction as a mental disorder that, in the bigger terms, influences the “image” of the area. The drug problem in the Pentagon left its marks on the whole urban district of Vrakuňa, reducing the residents’ quality of life significantly over the years.