Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 303 posts

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#31

Post by LeonB »

upsidesinclude wrote: post #10
comboy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few minutes with window open and you are back to the outside CO2 levels, so I don't think it's just CO2 (unless you have really high levels of it, sensors are pretty cheap nowadays and can serve as a good reminder to let in some fresh air). Not sure about pollen but trees produce chemicals that kill pathogens which attack them. Which is why it's healthy to breath forest air especially when you have a cold. Plus the…

Except people don't open their windows because it's cold or the someone in the office doesn't like the breeze or the temp or the sound..... Loosing blood has many beneficial effects including increasing blood oxygen levels as new blood cells are generated with better mitochondrial activity

Yes - so better comparison would be “think of it like leeches- best applied regularly to reduce your circulating blood volume”

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#32

Post by astrange »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #6

This is the sort of thing I think about when the pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people talk about their vision for the world. I live in a city now, and the lack of substantial nature is suffocating to the extent that I plan to move. The idea that we should all live this way to conserve space—a resource which is only scarce in these urban places—seems excessive to put it mildly. EDIT: A lot of urban folks are rebuttin…

Increasing urban density also increases the amount of nature because you aren't building suburbs on top of it.

eg Silicon Valley would be one of the world's most productive fruit farming regions if we hadn't covered it in single family houses in 1950.

Note there is a kind of "towers in the park" urbanism seen in China that actually is a bad balance between the two and kind of unpleasant to live in.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#33

Post by ajmurmann »

vkou wrote: post #21
throwaway894345 wrote: post #6

This is the sort of thing I think about when the pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people talk about their vision for the world. I live in a city now, and the lack of substantial nature is suffocating to the extent that I plan to move. The idea that we should all live this way to conserve space—a resource which is only scarce in these urban places—seems excessive to put it mildly. EDIT: A lot of urban folks are rebuttin…

The suburbs don't actually present a solution to this. There is no more nature in them than there is in any other urban environment. It's all manicured lawns and endless pavement, and you can't even walk to a park, because getting anywhere requires hopping into a car. If you want to see nature, you have to live way out in the boonies, on at a minimum, two-acre lots. If everyone lived like that, we'd all have two-hour…

Arguably, the suburbs make this worse, since you now need to drive through even more urban sprawl to get to true nature.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#34

Post by throwaway894345 »

evancox100 wrote: post #29
throwaway894345 wrote: post #6

This is the sort of thing I think about when the pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people talk about their vision for the world. I live in a city now, and the lack of substantial nature is suffocating to the extent that I plan to move. The idea that we should all live this way to conserve space—a resource which is only scarce in these urban places—seems excessive to put it mildly. EDIT: A lot of urban folks are rebuttin…

The more you let people build up, the more ground can be left as green space. No one is against park. Land area/space in general is not scarce. What is scarce is land area near job centers (or more broadly, near where people want to spend their time outside the home.) The more you spread people out, the more car dependent the city, necessitating more roads and parking lots.

I don’t have any problems with people building up, but I’m very skeptical that the space between tall buildings will be made into parks, and anyway a city park is not what I would consider “nature”. For folks who want density and can content themselves with urban green spaces, I wish you well on your quest to build taller and denser, just please don’t impose that on everyone! :)

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#35

Post by comboy »

upsidesinclude wrote: post #10
comboy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few minutes with window open and you are back to the outside CO2 levels, so I don't think it's just CO2 (unless you have really high levels of it, sensors are pretty cheap nowadays and can serve as a good reminder to let in some fresh air). Not sure about pollen but trees produce chemicals that kill pathogens which attack them. Which is why it's healthy to breath forest air especially when you have a cold. Plus the…

Except people don't open their windows because it's cold or the someone in the office doesn't like the breeze or the temp or the sound..... Loosing blood has many beneficial effects including increasing blood oxygen levels as new blood cells are generated with better mitochondrial activity

If you are talking about office environment then it's done by HVAC system and CO2 is often being monitored.

Re blood, I said every day. Losing blood can have some benefits. Just like taking multivitamin can if you have high deficiency of something it contains, although you likely need higher dosage of that thing then. But you don't want to be doing it every day. I mean, I admit I'm less confident about that statement regarding losing blood that I am regarding multivitamins, but draining blood used to be popular for.. pretty much everything and modern medicine somehow got rid of that.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#36

Post by ajmurmann »

TedShiller wrote: post #9

The pro housing people always think more housing will lower rents. Apparently they’ve never been to a big, dense city.

I am sure cities would be more affordable if we got rid of some of the residential buildings there...

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#37

Post by edmundsauto »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #6

This is the sort of thing I think about when the pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people talk about their vision for the world. I live in a city now, and the lack of substantial nature is suffocating to the extent that I plan to move. The idea that we should all live this way to conserve space—a resource which is only scarce in these urban places—seems excessive to put it mildly. EDIT: A lot of urban folks are rebuttin…

The three options are to build densely, or to sprawl over into nature spaces, or to have fewer children.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#39

Post by comboy »

LeonB wrote: post #31
upsidesinclude wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except people don't open their windows because it's cold or the someone in the office doesn't like the breeze or the temp or the sound..... Loosing blood has many beneficial effects including increasing blood oxygen levels as new blood cells are generated with better mitochondrial activity

Yes - so better comparison would be “think of it like leeches- best applied regularly to reduce your circulating blood volume”

Those actually still are (rarely) used in modern medicine because they inject pretty efficient anti-clotting substance.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#40

Post by john61 »

tjr225 wrote: post #11
throwaway894345 wrote: post #6

This is the sort of thing I think about when the pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people talk about their vision for the world. I live in a city now, and the lack of substantial nature is suffocating to the extent that I plan to move. The idea that we should all live this way to conserve space—a resource which is only scarce in these urban places—seems excessive to put it mildly. EDIT: A lot of urban folks are rebuttin…

You’re presenting a false dichotomy. There are plenty of dense places with incredible nature within just an hours drive. In the USA, Maybe not so much outside of the West Coast of the USA however. Personally, living in a city close to nature(seattle area) has been the best thing for me so far in my life; I have spent a stupid amount of money making it happen but wouldn’t trade it for anything. On the flip side it’s n…

Vienna even has a national park in the city. (Lobau Nationalpark)
Post reply on HN