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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

#161

Post by theK »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #157
lordnacho wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> And make it bicycle friendly. People like nature but they also like and need exercise. even better, make them walkable.

This! I love going mountain biking but commuting on a bike does not fit well with my person. And I t’s not missing bike lanes that are the problem with commuting, it is the numerous other issues a bike commute introduces to your life that are so often overseen. Cities must become walkable first again to succeed, making them bike friendly only pushes traffic problems a few years away…

5min walking through a park + 5-10 minutes in high speed, transport that is the future

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#162

Post by swah »

madsbuch wrote: post #134
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…

> pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people I would want to meet this person. I am a huge proponent of walkable cities, and I definitely see a city that is urban, high density and with a lot of nature. Heck Copenhagen, where I live, do it quite well -- within 20 minutes from the absolute center of the city (eg. Noerreport), I can be with grassing Alpacas ( https://goo.gl/maps/jcA6VFMPHC5qmYCp6 ) or I can be with large he…

Nature is also against walkability when it puts frigging hills on my way! Also the weather is way too agressive near the equator... I can endure it with sports clothes but not before work.

Seriously: walking/cycling on Amsterdam, Lisbon or Paris when the weather is 15 °C, mostly on flat ways, is a pleasure. You arrive at the office just a little heated up, I imagine.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#164

Post by emj »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #156
bakuninsbart wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin is better than most other places I've lived, but there is still so much room to improve. In my (sub-)district, pedestrians, cyclists, bars and trees share around 30% of the space on the street, while an additional 40% is parking and the last 30% is driving. The thing is, only around 35% of households here even own a car, and the vast majority of those probably just have it as a convenience. Public transport is…

I will throw Rome here, often overlooked when talking about this stuff, but Rome has the widest green area in Europe, parks, gardens, reserves, green areas in general cover more than 65% of the total surface, totaling 85,000 hectares (~850 km2). In Berlin in comparison only 30% of the city area is green spaces and woodland, totaling ~260km2. One of the reasons why Berlin population is 1.2 times larger than Rome, even…

How was that calculated; populations and areas of cities are often calculated in very different ways. You have to show these things on a map and describe why you choose what area and how the population number was calculated. Just "what is a park" differs between cities, even what is a parking space is different. E.g. cars needs a lot of room around them on motorways, that areas is not always counted as "motorway" but can be counted as "green space" in some papers.

I have not seen ANY good examples of comparisions between cities, but I know these problems comes up alot when we discuss cities here on HN.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#165

Post by brohoolio »

bigfudge wrote: post #152

Before people get too excited... I've examined a number of phds on this topic as a relative outsider to the field and have been pretty unimpressed by the claims of env-psych on green/bluespace. The methods used to unpack confounding by class/wealth are pretty minimal and, although lip service is occasionally paid to this in discussions sections after reviewers require it, nobody in the field seems to take it seriousl…

I’ll say from my own experience getting out in nature calms me and makes me feel better. Maybe it’s just the exercise of walking, maybe it’s seeing the trees and feeling the wind. It’s a good idea for folks to try it out and see how it makes them feel.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#166

Post by Asooka »

ajuc wrote: post #122
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…

This is one benefit of commieblocks nobody's talking about. They lead to green cities. This is how commieblock districts of my city look like: https://spoldzielnialsm.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Obecni... https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ud9-Z0UHVHg/W7-qUjfNT9I/AAAAAAAAi... Modern car-centric districts are much worse, and single houses districts are car-centric concrete hell in comparison.

Yeah, the Soviets and central planning get a lot of deserved flak, but as someone who grew in that part of the world, I hold that they got high density urban planning right. Not the execution, of course - the endemic corruption saw to that, all those buildings need a lot of repairs and upkeep, but the plan was sound. You have small quiet commercial buildings on the ground floor and every district has basic amenities within walking distance, with large communal green spaces. Sadly we're now trying to do everything the American way, i.e. the way 80s-90s America is presented by TV. You can look at a new building and pinpoint which sitcom served as inspiration. Picture perfect buildings being plopped on the outskirts of the city with frankly absurd connections to the roads around them. Residential-only buildings being built right to the edge of the road and cannibalising all the green space. New roads cutting right across old footpaths with no way to cross them. At least there's a little bit less corruption and a bit more freedom.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#167

Post by Asooka »

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…

No, we shouldn't all live this way. The argument is how to build the dense parts of cities so they're nice to live in. If you want to live in the countryside, that's great, but that's an entirely different thing.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#168

Post by neoromantique »

swah wrote: post #162
madsbuch wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pro-urban/pro-density/anti-car people I would want to meet this person. I am a huge proponent of walkable cities, and I definitely see a city that is urban, high density and with a lot of nature. Heck Copenhagen, where I live, do it quite well -- within 20 minutes from the absolute center of the city (eg. Noerreport), I can be with grassing Alpacas ( https://goo.gl/maps/jcA6VFMPHC5qmYCp6 ) or I can be with large he…

Nature is also against walkability when it puts frigging hills on my way! Also the weather is way too agressive near the equator... I can endure it with sports clothes but not before work. Seriously: walking/cycling on Amsterdam, Lisbon or Paris when the weather is 15 °C, mostly on flat ways, is a pleasure. You arrive at the office just a little heated up, I imagine.

That’s just excuses though, people cycle even in Norway where it’s below freezing most of the year

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#169

Post by zoover2020 »

theK wrote: post #161
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And make it bicycle friendly. People like nature but they also like and need exercise. even better, make them walkable.

This! I love going mountain biking but commuting on a bike does not fit well with my person. And I t’s not missing bike lanes that are the problem with commuting, it is the numerous other issues a bike commute introduces to your life that are so often overseen. Cities must become walkable first again to succeed, making them bike friendly only pushes traffic problems a few years away… 5min walking through a park + 5-1…

Why not both?! Cycling and walking aren't mutually exclusive

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#170

Post by ryukafalz »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #96
spencerflem wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Think about what happens if everyone does this. There are about 613,000 households in my city; what does it look like if all of them were to move out of the city and go somewhere closer to nature? Well, they'd probably each take up a lot more space, and... well, that sounds a lot like suburban sprawl! And suddenly you're not quite so proximate to nature anymore.

No, I'd rather let cities build up, and build/maintain better access to nature outside the city via transit. Leave nature be, and make it easy to get to when you want to.

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