Urbanization is Globally increasing at a rapid rate but its consequences for mental health, including cognitive functioning, are not well understood. In particular, little is known about the effects of different morphological features associated with urban development, such as variations in the densities of urban fabric (i.e., degrees of ground sealing). We investigated associations of episodic memory, working memory, and fluid intelligence with different densities of urban fabric, obtained from the European Urban Atlas, in a structural equation model framework. We used data on 1053 healthy participants aged 61–88 years (mean age 70.33; SD = 3.75; 51% female) drawn from the Berlin Aging Study II. All participants were living within the city of Berlin, Germany. Our data include the precise geographical coordinates of every household, thereby permitting the calculation of the share of each density type of urban fabric within a 1-km radius around the household. We found these types to be significantly related to working memory and fluid intelligence. No significant association emerged for episodic memory. All results were robust against the inclusion of a set of covariates known to be related to cognitive performance. We discuss the idea of enrichment effects due to morphological features of urban development as one possible mechanism.

城市化在全球范围内快速增长，但其对心理健康（包括认知功能）的影响尚不清楚。特别是，人们对与城市发展相关的不同形态特征的影响知之甚少，例如城市结构密度的变化（即地面密封程度）。我们在结构方程模型框架中研究了情景记忆、工作记忆和流体智力与不同密度的城市结构之间的关联，这些城市结构是从欧洲城市地图集获得的。我们使用了来自柏林老龄化研究 II 的 1053 名 61-88 岁健康参与者（平均年龄 70.33；SD = 3.75；51% 女性）的数据。所有参与者都居住在德国柏林市。我们的数据包括每个家庭的精确地理坐标，从而可以计算家庭周围 1 公里半径内每种密度类型的城市结构所占的份额。我们发现这些类型与工作记忆和流体智力显着相关。情景记忆没有出现显着的关联。所有结果对于包含一组已知与认知表现相关的协变量都是稳健的。我们讨论了城市发展的形态特征所产生的丰富效应的想法，作为一种可能的机制。