New in InVEST: The Urban Mental Health Model

This story was originally published in The Natural Capital Review, the NatCap Substack.

Cities are shaped by countless decisions that seem like they could be purely physical: where trees are planted, how neighborhoods are redeveloped, which streets get shade, where parks are expanded. But those choices do more than change the look of a city. They shape how people experience it and this can impact other aspects of our lives. These choices can influence comfort, stress, connection, and overall well-being.

The new Urban Mental Health model, released as part of InVEST 3.19.0, helps users estimate how changes in urban greenness may translate into preventable mental health cases and avoided societal costs. It offers a new way for urban planners and others to consider the effects of nature on human well-being not as an afterthought, but as part of the conversation from the beginning.

Why this model matters

InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs) is a suite of open-source models used to model and map the goods and services from nature that sustain and fulfill human life. Over the years, InVEST has helped users explore questions around carbon, water, biodiversity, flood mitigation, urban cooling, and more (see a collection of Urban InVEST models!). We know that more trees and parks can make our neighborhood more beautiful, cooler, and walkable. 

And a growing body of work has pointed to links between nature in cities and mental health. But those connections have not always been easy to translate into practical planning tools. The Urban Mental Health model helps bridge that divide by turning an important but sometimes abstract idea into something cities can explore through specific scenarios.

Together with other Urban InVEST models, this provides a portfolio of co-benefits from integrating nature into cities. And given that nearly three-quarters of the global population will soon be living in cities, this is increasingly crucial. 

What the model does

In practical terms, the Urban Mental Health model gives users a way to connect urban greening scenarios to potential mental health benefits. It can help people:

• compare a baseline urban land use  with an alternative land use scenario
• estimate how changes in greenness may be linked to changes in mental health outcomes
• map where potential benefits may be greatest across a city
• translate those results into preventable cases and, when relevant, associated societal costs
• summarize results to support planning, communication, and decision-making

Using this tool in decision-making

The 3.19.0 release includes not only the model itself, but also a companion Urban Mental Health Report to help users review and communicate results more easily (for a brief synopsis of what our new InVEST Reports feature does, see our recent Substack post).

Engage with us at the Natural Capital Symposium and online

For anyone interested in seeing the model in action, there will also be a chance to learn more at the Natural Capital Symposium 2026 at Stanford University this summer. A Monday afternoon technical session on June 29, 2026, from 3:30–5:00 PM will focus on InVEST’s urban models, with the new Urban Mental Health model featured prominently through presentations and hands-on exercises. 

You can also always comment or ask questions on our online Community Forum. We’re interested in what you are using this model for! 

The Urban Mental Health model helps demonstrate in specific, place-based ways that ecosystem services modeling and nature-based solutions are about more than just water, carbon,and biodiversity. Nature is inextricably linked with our bodies and minds, and can be a potent and cost-effective tool for improving our health in a wide range of ways.