Parks and minds

[nancylebov]

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/01/04/how_the_city_hurts_your_brain/?page=full

Briefly, the idea is that city environments make it harder to focus and to maintain self-control, and that even a little nature helps.

This studies doesn't explain why some people *want* to live in cities, nor does it address that a lot of people seem to want some nature, but then they want to get back to a city. Nor do they address the possibility that cities are good for many people from about 17 to 30, even if they're rough on younger and older people.

The bit I found most interesting was about parks working best if they have a variety of plant species-- my favorite park is only a half block. (More or less at 8th and Fitzwater.) It isn't big enough to supply any protection from noise. I'm tremendously fond of the big planters that have a bunch of different sorts of plants growing in them.

Link thanks to supergee.

Addendum:: My point wasn't "Why would anyone want to live in a city?". It was "those researchers (or possibly the popularizers) aren't looking at a really basic question".

siderea and atomicat point out that if 'nature' feels that safe, it's been remade by and for people. Actual nature, the place we evolved in, is a good bit more dangerous.

Comments

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Why want to live in a city or get back to one?
* more jobs / sq.mi.
* more variety of things to do
* public transportation -- just ask my offspring about the suburb where they grew up vs. the city!

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

DC is littered with little, triangular parks, as well as various parks in squares and circles. There were two little triangular parks along Maryland AVE NE, each consisting of two or there benches, a tree or two, and a few shrubs. Not much, but still a nice place to sit and chat with passersby, a friend or neighbors, or read a book outdoors. DC's streets are also lined with trees, which makes it much more livable than some similarly-sized cities, or at least nice to walk down the sidewalk than in some, especially in the Summer.

In the city, i could hit a museum, easily get to where i needed on a bus or a subway, and easily get to my job, wherever it was. I could hit the mountains or what for a day or three, and come home to my as-green-as-it-gets city.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Well this is perfect timing. I'm going to start sending out some feelers about doing an art project this summer where I basically turn a few walls in the city (preferably an alcove of some type) into an immersive outdoor environment. That makes this article rather valuable.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Cool! Will you be able to put in live plants? Pictures of many kinds of plants?

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Ah sorry, should have been a bit more descriptive. I'd like to put up huge photographic panoramas, vivid and realistic enough to draw you in. I think it would be a great contrast and a great way to show the tremendous difference. Turn a corner and wham, suddenly your entire field of vision is taken up by some wild outdoor scene.

[sterlingspider.livejournal.com]

Actually I just read a post which addresses (and links to) one of the cited studies suggesting that the study was misread to indicate a negative affect of urban environments whereas the study only actually pointed to a restorative affect from natural environments.

http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/01/acquiring_a_natural_.html

[siderea]

That article drives me up a wall. It takes a particularly clueless, pampered, Industrialized Westerner to think that "nature" is safer:

Imagine a walk around Walden Pond, in Concord. The woods surrounding the pond are filled with pitch pine and hickory trees. Chickadees and red-tailed hawks nest in the branches; squirrels and rabbits skirmish in the berry bushes. Natural settings are full of objects that automatically capture our attention, yet without triggering a negative emotional response -- unlike, say, a backfiring car.

Yeah, now imagine a walk around Walden Pond, in it's original state, where you might encounter coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, bears, or rattle snakes. The only reason we aren't in a state of hypervigilence in nature is that either (1) it's not actual nature at all, but a domesticated theme park made of trees or (2) we don't know better being domesticated ourselves or (3) both.

This is why every year, we lose a few city-folk to the White Mountains of NH. Nature isn't safe. By definition: nature is that which is not tame.

Lawns aren't "nature". Parks aren't "nature". They're things humans build out of living organisms. These things they are citing as so restorative to the human spirit, whatever they may be, aren't nature.

I grew up surrounded by the sort of nature that casually eats people. I moved to a city as fast as fortune allowed. I don't have a lot of question in my mind why people move to cities.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

What sort of nature is that? We've got wolves up here, coyotes are skittish as all hell to the point of raging paranoia, and even a black bear mama will avoid a person if at all possible. Even their charges when they do charge are a bluff, 99 times out of 100 they back down (the 1 out of 100 they'll give you a swat and that's it). Nope, the most dangerous things in these woods are drunken dumb-ass farm-boys. Now the cold, that's something I'm justifiably scared of! I'm sure those folk who go missing in NH must be some kind of helpless ignorant though, quite sure of that.

[siderea]

Now the cold, that's something I'm justifiably scared of!

Yes, that's the thing most to be scared of -- and the little things that make you vulnerable to it. Wrong time of year, a misplaced foot, a little stumble, and now you're wet and limping and twice as far to getting dry as you were a second before, and sunset's coming. Which is why you need to be paying attention.

ETA: Re: I'm sure those folk who go missing in NH must be some kind of helpless ignorant though, quite sure of that.

When I first read "The Cold Equations" I knew exactly what it was talking about.

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

I used to work up north in Thompson, Manitoba. My boss would drive around in his shorts and a shirt with his big-arsed loaded truck....

"So what will you do if you ever have a break-down?"
"Aha! Well, all I have to do is press this button here, On-Star will send a truck out!"
"Ok, well, what do you do if it's the button that's broken?"
"Uhhhh....."

Dumbass! *grin* Looks like we're heading for another -30 cold snap here. Well, beats -40! I do love living in a place that'll kill you dead if you screw up.