Every week, we bring you the latest news in placemaking, landscape architecture and urban planning, the nature-mental health link, and much more. Check back each week for new roundups and items.
Nature Is But Another Name for Health
“’We are trying to figure out precisely what types of nature provide the most health benefits,’ said William Sullivan, ASLA, a landscape architecture professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, at the Environmental Design Research Assocation (EDRA) conference in New Orleans. The eventual goal is to be able to prescribe doses of nature, or specific activities in nature, to help with a range of illnesses. ‘But today — although we have good evidence that exposure to green landscapes is good for you — we can’t say if you design something this way, people will live four years longer.’”
How Can We Design A Better Hospital?
“Researcher Roger Ulrich says there are many reasons to love gardens. They’re beautiful and restful — and most people would rather look at a garden than say, a brick wall. But, he says, that’s not why more and more hospitals over the last decade and a half have integrated them into their design. That’s happened because research has shown that exposure to natural environments has demonstrable positive and cost-saving outcomes on health. In other words, patients tend to get well more quickly, need fewer drugs and require less follow up care — which all translates into savings.”
Silence, Flow, and Awe
“The health and wellbeing of our planet and of us as individuals is a great challenge that can and should be viewed and adressed from many angles. The connections between our lifestyle, our society and the health of our planet are strong. Our work is similarly interconnected with a focus on silence, flow and awe.”
‘Biophilic Urbanism’ Aims to Bring City Dwellers Back to Nature
“How much do people actually need to “get back to nature,” especially those who have chosen to live in cities? Which cities are doing the best job of connecting its residents with plants and animals amid the steel, concrete and other manmade elements dominating most urban landscapes? Those questions are within the realm of “biophilic urbanism,” a fast-growing movement which includes urban planning, architecture and building practices all focused on biophilia, a term popularized by Harvard myrmecologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson.”
