Every week, we bring you the latest news in placemaking, landscape architecture, the nature-mental health link, and much more. Check back each week for new roundups and items.
Cities and Their Psychology: How Neuroscience Affects Urban Planning
“More than 30 years ago, the pioneering urbanist William Whyte was charged by the city of New York with the task of unraveling the mysteries of public space. Why do some such spaces attract crowds of happy visitors whilst others sit barren and empty? Whyte’s research programme, conducted with stopwatches, time-lapse videography, and lots of simple paper charts, was a spectacular success…Fast forward a few decades, and many things have changed…What has changed dramatically is the set of tools that are available to those who would understand the detailed workings of the urban realm. Now we can go well beyond simple observations of the overt behaviour of city dwellers. We can look inside the bodies and minds of those who inhabit urban spaces. We can measure their gaze, their beating hearts, and the state of their autonomic nervous systems as they react to arousing and stressful events.”
Urban Greenspace Enables Unexpected Biodiversity
“A sprawling concrete jungle with millions of people might not readily appear as a place full of natural biodiversity, especially compared to the natural lands that have been cemented over to create the cities. But new research involving 147 cities has found that a surprisingly large number of plant and animal species persists and, in some cases, flourish in urban environments. Researchers from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) report that cities are not the wastelands of biodiversity that they are sometimes considered to be.”
10 Reasons We Need More Contact With Nature
We have a human right to a meaningful connection to nature, and we have the responsibilities that come with that right. Many people today support the notion that every person, especially every young person,has a right to access the internet. How much more should every person have a right to access the natural world, because that connection is part of our humanity? Researchers have found that regardless of culture people gravitate to images of nature, especially the savannah. Our inborn affiliation for nature may explain why we prefer to live in houses with particular views of the natural world.
Outdoor Activities Effective Therapy for Veterans
“President Obama highlighted the challenges facing U.S. combat veterans in his State of the Union address… Keith Tidball, a veteran and senior extension associate in Cornell University’s Department of Natural Resources, lauds the president’s initiative, noting that outdoor activities can be effective therapy for returning veterans. Says Tidball, ‘I applaud President Obama for bringing national attention to a different battle that many soldiers and veterans face in their daily lives – the battle for optimal mental health. These challenges often go unrecognized and more attention needs to be paid to the mental health of our men and women in uniform. Programs such as those being analyzed in the Returning Warriors Outdoor Recreation, Restoration, and Resilience Study can help and we need to expand support for more of these initiatives.'”
