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.
10 Ways to Get Your Kids Out in Nature, and Why it Matters
“According to Richard Louv, 2008 Audubon Medal Recipient and author of Last Child in the Woods, kids today are becoming more and more removed from nature, at the expense of their own psychological and physical well being. Children are spending more time in structured activities and on electronic devices, leaving little time for unstructured play in nature… Children who spend more time in nature develop better motor fitness and coordination, especially in balance and agility. And the benefits of the mind are not to be overlooked; greater time in nature can help children develop a healthy interior life, greater mental acuity, inventiveness, and sustained intellectual development. As it turns out, being in nature is not the “tree-hugging” hype of the past.”
Green from Green: Public Parks Increase CRE Value
“Open spaces in urban areas not only improve communities but can add billions of dollars to adjacent commercial real estate properties, agreed panelists at the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Fall Meeting, being held this week at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. Two recent examples are New York’s Bryant Park and Dallas’s Klyde Warren Park.And even while government funding for public parks has decreased over the past several decades, parks conservancies and business improvement districts have stepped up to the plate, said Peter Harnik, director of the San Francisco–based Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence.”
Openlands Builds Green Space for Chicago Public Schools
“Openlands, one of the oldest metropolitan conservation organizations in the nation, celebrated its continued effort to green Chicago Public Schools with the opening of its latest school garden in Ravenswood on Friday. A dedication ceremony at McPherson Elementary School, 4728 N. Wolcott Avenue, brought together students and teachers, as well as local school and government officials together to celebrate the garden’s installation. Speakers included Alderman Ameya Pawar (47th), Bill Clarkin of BMO Harris Bank (lead sponsor), Jerry Adelmann of Openlands, Senator Heather Steans, Principal Carmen Mendoza and Bob Farster of the Local School Council. Over the past seven years, Openlands has worked to transform Chicago’s paved schoolyards into living classrooms that provide open green space with the “Building School Gardens” program. Openlands’ has installed 54 gardens to date on Chicago Public School campuses across the city.”
Former Curitiba Mayor Jaime Lerner on Healing Cities With “Urban Acupuncture”
“There’s a park in New York City that Jaime Lerner loves. “Paley Park,” he says, on East 53rd Street. “It’s very small, and that’s what makes it great.The park is indeed tiny — 4,200 square feet flanked by ivy-covered walls, with a gentle waterfall at its back that’s both subtle and arresting at the same time. It’s exactly the kind of public space Lerner has become an evangelist for: a pinprick of high-quality urbanism whose effect on the surrounding area exceeds its diminutive dimensions.Lerner’s book, Urban Acupuncture: Celebrating Pinpricks of Change That Enrich City Life, champions such spaces. As the three-term mayor of Curitiba, Brazil in the 1970s and ’80s, he pioneered a low-cost, low-impact approach to solving the city’s problems, from implementing the world’s first bus rapid transit system to giving different parts of the city their own unique public lighting schemes.”
