Open Voices News Roundup: May 12

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.

The Nature of Hospitals
“In 1984, Roger Ulrich’s “surgery recovery and view out the hospital window study” set a worldwide standard for research on the health benefits of nature.  Since then, Dr. Ulrich has been a key driver of the still limited body of scientific research on how exposure to gardens and nature in health care settings — like here at Legacy Health, where Dr. Ulrichhas consulted for the past fifteen years — reduce patient pain and stress while improving other outcomes.  This early research is part of why interdisciplinary teams at Legacy’s six hospitals have created eleven therapeutic gardens to serve our patients, families and employees year-round, 24-7.  Now, in his recent Lancet Neurology study “Gardens that take care of us,” Ulrich and fellow researchers state the need for more rigorous study on how gardens provide measurable benefits in patients with specific medical conditions.  We’re ready to break that new ground.”

Flower Power
Have you ever been to a memorial garden? Memorial gardens are areas planted for a specific purpose. The purpose is to remember someone or something special . One person who helped plant a memorial garden said, “There is a power and healing that comes from digging in the dirt, planting new life, and nurturing its growth… sunflowers make sense as one tall way to remember life and make it a bit better.” The Flower Power Natural Inquirer monograph explores how memorial gardens help people and communities after a tragedy. The monograph also explores how people and communities may learn new things in the process of creating these gardens.”

The Quest to Measure the Brain’s Response to Urban Design
“So there I was, walking down familiar cobbled streets in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, trying not to feel self-conscious even though I resembled a character in a 1990s sci-fi rendering of The Future. Not only was I wearing an EEG device that looked like a bulky phone headset, with a sensor positioned squarely in the middle of my forehead…We were participating in a little experiment trying to answer the question, ‘How does the brain respond to the city?’”

Community-Led Park Partnerships: It’s Not Just the Money
“The Cully neighborhood is considered the most “parks-deficient” neighborhood in Portland. Citywide, 40 percent of residents live within a quarter-mile of a park. In Cully, only 24 percent do, with almost 23 percent of neighborhood children living in poverty.  For over twenty years, Cully residents set their sights on the conversion of a 25-acre grassy field in the neighborhood, well-located and large enough for a range of community activities – even if it happened to be the site of a former landfill.  Tony DeFalco, Coordinator for Let Us Build Cully Park!(LUBCP!) recalls, “The community wanted it badly enough to figure out a way to build it.”