Abstract
<p>In a context of a global mental health crisis and persistent inequalities in access to care, this study explores the potential of waiting spaces to expand everyday opportunities to engage in wellbeing practices without requiring additional time, financial cost, or deliberate search. Inspired by how cities have expanded access to physical wellbeing through freely accessible infrastructure, such as outdoor exercise equipment, it proposes the Wellbeing Practices in Waiting Spaces (WPWS) framework, which reconceptualizes waiting as latent infrastructure for the situated activation of brief wellbeing practices.Using a Research through Design (RtD) approach, the framework was developed across four phases: qualitative clinical exploration using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (N = 8); urban prototyping in Amsterdam, Milan, and Barcelona; exploration of everyday appropriation across seven countries (N = 41); and comparative analysis of public space interventions.Findings suggest that situated activation depends on three interdependent components: (1) spatio-temporal conditions modulating attentional availability, particularly during waiting (when); (2) inner human capacities — mindfulness, appreciation, and compassion — understood as potentially activatable resources (what); and (3) visual mediating devices introducing legible, voluntary invitations to wellbeing micropractices into the urban environment (how). Flow-interruption rates of 1–5% were observed across the urban prototypes, while 85.4% of participants reported mentally repeating the phrase and 60.9% shared it with others.The study identifies socio-spatial conditions that may increase the probability of activating wellbeing practices, without establishing causal or clinical effects. WPWS offers a transferable framework for expanding low-threshold access to wellbeing practices where people, time, and infrastructure already converge.Keywords: Urban wellbeing; Waiting spaces; Latent infrastructure; Situated activation; Mental health equity; Trauma-informed design; Wellbeing micropractices.</p>