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Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

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Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#91

Post by brailsafe »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #34
evancox100 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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! :)

Honestly I feel like you're just failing to precisely represent what you're wanting. Here's what I think you're getting at, definitely tell me if I'm off.

1) Cities, whether they're sprawling or dense, or park-laden or not, can be suffocating. It just so happens that yours atm is less park-laden. Thus, your advice for exclusively urban people, is to actually put the effort in to get into real nature; into the mountains, the isolated wilderness, the lakes, etc.. because there's a serenity like that you can't get with facsimiles like neighborhood parks

2) Space between high rises isn't used all that effectively. I think this is particularly a problem with downtown core areas moreso than downtown adjacent areas in a lot of cities.

I'm personally not anti-car outright, just anti-car as a primary means of day to day utility oriented travel and the design of urban spaces that prioritize that over others. If you walk or bike or skateboard most of the time, you develop a feeling for the space you're doing that in, and it has an affect on your life. If you're only walking through parking lots, on broken old slabs of sidewalk that nobody cares about, with no flowers or trees or cats or people around, you're going to want to avoid that. I'm a huge advocate for building your immediate surroundings so they facilitate healthy and sustainable living (the opposite of broken parking lots in a suburbab wasteland) but also for getting the fuck out of the whole city pretty often if you can. I rent a car to do this, and might buy a beater in the future to have more flexibility in that respect, but definitely get the hell out once in a while if you can.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#92

Post by diob »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #81
diob wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part of why I love visiting Japan, so much nature scattered throughout otherwise urban areas. Lot's of other places in the world like it as well. Makes me jealous since I love in the concrete wasteland that is Phoenix.

Hey fellow Phoenician! I actually have a different experience in Arizona. The masterplan communities here are great at prioritizing community space. My neighborhood is connected by an interior park-like trail that twists and winds for 22miles. Most houses are within 2 blocks of an entrance to the trail system, and there are two separate k-12 schools attached to the trails so kiddos can ride their scooters/bikes to sc…

Lucky! I'm happy to have my house given the real estate situation these days, but I'm definitely in a "poorer" area :) Can't get anywhere green / nature without some sort of car.

Part of the reason I am jealous of these other countries is there isn't as much of a divide between who gets the nice / and who is relegated to the commuting "concrete wasteland" as I phrased it. There's a strong sense of community / wanting everyone to have access. I'd love for our cities to start investing in the same way so everyone can reap the benefits (which I think are numerous, it has crazy dividends and life long impacts). Hard to push that here though.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#93

Post by lordnacho »

radu_floricica wrote: post #52

Funny thing is, making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. I see above conversations on living closer to nature, or mountains vs parks - but the vast majority of time spent is walking and driving in the cities. So it seems a no-brainer that before everything else, before thinking about taking a 2 hour drive to hike, or making the time for a weekly visit to the park, we should first make sure the places peo…

And make it bicycle friendly. People like nature but they also like and need exercise.

There's a number of European cities that have made huge leaps in recent years beautifying themselves while allowing more people to bike every day.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#94

Post by throwaway894345 »

yongjik wrote: post #71
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…

It feels weird to argue against suburbs while I'm living there, but... Most pro-density/pro-mass-transit people aren't arguing against rural lifestyle. They're against suburban, car-dominated lifestyle. I'll conjecture that, for many people, the potential benefit of living "close to nature" is more than negated by driving everywhere. Commuting in a subway in a mega-city easily racks up thirty minutes of brisk walking…

I hear a lot of them argue about how rural people waste space and how they’re sick of subsidizing rural infrastructure and we should impose policies which further incentivize people to migrate from rural to urban areas. The thrust of the issue seems to be directed at suburbs (if only because many of these folks are only marginally aware of the world beyond the suburbs), but rural life is still wholly incompatible with their car free utopian vision (although more than a few have amusingly proposed extending public transit to every rural community!).

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#95

Post by koboll »

I wonder if this title isn't a bit backwards. We are creatures that emerged from nature; being in nature is baseline to us. A better way to phrase this might be "being constantly trapped in a world made of concrete and drywall causes enormous emotional and cognitive detriments to people".

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#96

Post by throwaway894345 »

spencerflem wrote: post #70
throwaway894345 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t advocating for suburbs. There are more options besides suburbs and urban areas—you should check them out! > 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 commutes on twenty-lane highways. What a strange comment! Millions of people live with reasonable access to nature and most of them don’t have 2 acre l…

I don't quite get your point, are you suggesting to live near nature or to have the ability to access nature when you want to? If the second, I really don't see how taking cars out of urban centers and making nice walkable people-focused areas stops you from taking a bus out and biking the rest of the way, or even renting a car once you're out of the city part

> I don't quite get your point, are you suggesting to live near nature or to have the ability to access nature when you want to?

Both? I’m not really sure how these are different given that proximity is the limiting factor in access.

> If the second, I really don't see how taking cars out of urban centers and making nice walkable people-focused areas stops you from taking a bus out and biking the rest of the way, or even renting a car once you're out of the city part

I’m not sure what you’re arguing here. I certainly don’t have a problem with making urban areas more walkable. That said, an hour of driving after work isn’t going to get you past the suburbs in most US cities, which means you’re limited to weekend trips and if you’re spending every weekend trying to get out of the city it’s worth asking if city life is optimal for you.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#97

Post by throwaway894345 »

brailsafe wrote: post #91
throwaway894345 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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! :)

Honestly I feel like you're just failing to precisely represent what you're wanting. Here's what I think you're getting at, definitely tell me if I'm off. 1) Cities, whether they're sprawling or dense, or park-laden or not, can be suffocating. It just so happens that yours atm is less park-laden. Thus, your advice for exclusively urban people, is to actually put the effort in to get into real nature; into the mountai…

Sorry for the imprecision.

My city is “park laden”. I live next to a 1200 acre park. City parks aren’t nature; however, and having seen the real deal there’s only so much one can do to convince one’s subconscious otherwise.

But yes, I find daily life in an urban environment (however park laden!) to be depleting. Cities are still tons of fun to visit and explore, I’m glad they exist, etc. This might be different if I could reasonably make it to some nature between work and sunset, but in most cities you won’t make it past the burbs.

Hopefully that’s clarifying.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#99

Post by QuikAccount »

radu_floricica wrote: post #52

Funny thing is, making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. I see above conversations on living closer to nature, or mountains vs parks - but the vast majority of time spent is walking and driving in the cities. So it seems a no-brainer that before everything else, before thinking about taking a 2 hour drive to hike, or making the time for a weekly visit to the park, we should first make sure the places peo…

The problem with making cities green, like the problem with everything else, is terrible city design. There is quite a bit of greenery where I live and it is all anxiety inducing because it is planted near intersections and cutting off line of sight so you can't see pedestrians well or oncoming traffic. There are certain areas that have these wonderful bushes, too bad they opted for those bushes instead of sidewalks but hey, who cares about pedestrians am I right?

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#100

Post by TedShiller »

n8cpdx wrote: post #62
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.

What is the right amount of housing to lower rents? How many units should we destroy or prevent to make housing affordable? Does spreading houses further apart make infrastructure per unit more or less expensive? Are you seriously anti-housing? Are you pro-homelessness? I honestly don’t get how someone can seriously take an “anti-housing” position, which is what I assume you are when you otherize “pro housing” people…

I don't know anyone who's "anti housing". Housing is an essential need for everyone. But putting more housing into an area that is already dense is not the answer, and it never has been.

You should study induced demand. Has building more highways in LA improved traffic? No, it has only made it worse. Ever notice how every airport in the world is always under construction, and still always overcrowded? Yep, induced demand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

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