Green space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation?
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This research shows that the percentage of green space in people’s living environment has a positive association with the perceived general health of residents, and green space seems to be more than just a luxury and consequently the development of greenspace should be allocated a more central position in spatial planning policy.Abstract:
Study objectives: To investigate the strength of the relation between the amount of green space in people's living environment and their perceived general health. This relation is analysed for different age and socioeconomic groups. Furthermore, it is analysed separately for urban and more rural areas, because the strength of the relation was expected to vary with urbanity. Design: The study includes 250 782 people registered with 104 general practices who filled in a self administered form on sociodemographic background and perceived general health. The percentage of green space (urban green space, agricultural space, natural green space) within a one kilometre and three kilometre radius around the postal code coordinates was calculated for each household. Methods: Multilevel logistic regression analyses were performed at three levels—that is, individual level, family level, and practice level—controlled for sociodemographic characteristics. Main results: The percentage of green space inside a one kilometre and a three kilometre radius had a significant relation to perceived general health. The relation was generally present at all degrees of urbanity. The overall relation is somewhat stronger for lower socioeconomic groups. Elderly, youth, and secondary educated people in large cities seem to benefit more from presence of green areas in their living environment than other groups in large cities. Conclusions: This research shows that the percentage of green space in people's living environment has a positive association with the perceived general health of residents. Green space seems to be more than just a luxury and consequently the development of green space should be allocated a more central position in spatial planning policy.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Nature and Health
TL;DR: This work focuses on nature as represented by aspects of the physical environment relevant to planning, design, and policy measures that serve broad segments of urbanized societies and considers research on pathways between nature and health involving air quality, physical activity, social cohesion, and stress reduction.
Journal ArticleDOI
Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational population study
Richard Mitchell,Frank Popham +1 more
TL;DR: The association between income deprivation and mortality differed significantly across the groups of exposure to green space for mortality from all causes and circulatory disease, but not from lung cancer or intentional self-harm, which suggests physical environments that promote good health might be important to reduce socioeconomic health inequalities.
Journal ArticleDOI
A systematic review of evidence for the added benefits to health of exposure to natural environments
TL;DR: It is suggestive that natural environments may have direct and positive impacts on well-being, but support the need for investment in further research on this question to understand the general significance for public health.
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Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities : an observational population study. Commentary
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between income deprivation and mortality in the UK and found that those living in the greenest areas had the lowest levels of health inequality related to income deprivation.
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Classifying and valuing ecosystem services for urban planning
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors synthesize knowledge and methods to classify and value ecosystem services for urban planning and identify analytical challenges for valuation to inform urban planning in the face of high heterogeneity and fragmentation characterizing urban ecosystems.
References
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Book
The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective
Rachel Kaplan,Stephen Kaplan +1 more
TL;DR: A study of the natural environment, people, and the relationship between them is presented in this paper, where the authors offer a research-based analysis of the vital psychological role that nature plays.
Journal ArticleDOI
View through a window may influence recovery from surgery
TL;DR: Surgical patients assigned to rooms with windows looking out on a natural scene had shorter postoperative hospital stays, received fewer negative evaluative comments in nurses' notes, and took fewer potent analgesics than matched patients in similar Rooms with windows facing a brick building wall.
Journal ArticleDOI
Nature and Health
TL;DR: This work focuses on nature as represented by aspects of the physical environment relevant to planning, design, and policy measures that serve broad segments of urbanized societies and considers research on pathways between nature and health involving air quality, physical activity, social cohesion, and stress reduction.
Journal ArticleDOI
Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compared psychophysiological stress recovery and directed attention restoration in natural and urban field settings using repeated measures of ambulatory blood pressure, emotion, and attention collected from 112 randomly assigned young adults.