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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

#181

Post by throwaway894345 »

yodelshady wrote: post #119
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…

> I’m sure they’ve grown, but it’s still a big world out there people. I No, it just isn't. Humans have transformed seventy per cent of the land on Earth[1]. Including the deserts. Suburbs are the second most land intensive thing we do, after farming, and for almost every other developed-world country, this problem is more acute than in the US. Get some perspective. That is a "wind turbines cause global warming" leve…

The US has nearly 7 acres of land for every man, woman, and child and yet the average lot size is only .2 acres. Since the average household size is 2.5 people, that’s about 0.08 acres used per person. Moreover, that figure ignores apartment, condo, and other multi-family buildings, so the actual land usage per person is quite a lot lower. Of course, we also need farms to support people, but the US produces much more food than it needs. And yes, the population is growing, but that growth is tapering off and anyway we could manipulate our immigration policies as well. At the end of the day, the US is a vast country, but this isn’t immediately obvious to people who have lived their whole lives in a dense urban environment.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#182

Post by throwaway894345 »

Asooka wrote: post #167
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.

Agreed. I wish more people shared your perspective! :)

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#183

Post by ryukafalz »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #174
ryukafalz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and how they’re sick of subsidizing rural infrastructure I mean, it’s fine if you want to live somewhere rural, but why should that be subsidized?

I’m fine with not subsidizing it but we subsidize all sorts of public goods—schools, libraries, etc. It’s not exactly unusual.

Let me rephrase that: why should we subsidize it more than we subsidize the equivalent infrastructure in urban areas?

It costs a lot more to provide infrastructure to rural areas than urban ones. If we expect both of these to be fully paid for by our taxes, and if we expect the tax burden to be similar, that means those of us living in cities are subsidizing those living in rural ones. (And note I'm not talking about actual agricultural industries that require that much space, I'm talking about people living in rural areas just because they like it better. Everyone depends on farms, we can subsidize those.)

I'm fine with people living in rural areas if they want to, but I don't think we should expect city-dwellers to subsidize them if they do.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#184

Post by peoplefromibiza »

emj wrote: post #164
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I know a lot of people are skeptic about this, but I was surprised as well when I discovered how green Rome is.

As a Roman, I also thought that Paris or Berlin were greener or bigger, they are not.

> You have to show these things on a map

Here it is

Berlin and Rome, same zoom level on Google maps

https://imgur.com/WU3dWEJ

I've highlighted on the left the area that is actually Rome's territory, Google maps only highlights the area inside the "Grande raccordo anulare" [1], but the city of Rome extends much farther than that, also the area on the beach (the one called Ostia) is actually part of the city even though it is disconnected from it.

That's Rome, the city, then there's the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital [2], which is much larger and includes many smaller municipalities around it, which is in turn smaller than Rome metropolitan area [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_Raccordo_Anulare

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_City_of_Rome_Capi...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_metropolitan_area

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#185

Post by throwaway894345 »

ryukafalz wrote: post #147
throwaway894345 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a bizarre constraint. Of course the forest isn’t in the town . You live in a suburb or town or (this is going to blow some minds in this thread) acreage outside of town that is at most a reasonable drive to nature. My criticism of cities is that a lot of them are hours away from anything that anyone would call nature (although this thread has made me aware that there are a shockingly large number of people who h…

> My criticism of cities is that a lot of them are hours away from anything that anyone would call nature This is only because the suburbs are often sprawled in between the city and any nature that might have been nearby. It’d be a heck of a lot easier to get to from the city if you didn’t have miles and miles of low-density suburbs in each direction. Anyway, “local urban parks” is a pretty broad category. It’s not j…

> This is only because the suburbs are often sprawled in between the city and any nature that might have been nearby.

Agreed, but I don’t think there’s a realistic world where you have dense urban cores immediately juxtaposed with forest, especially considering how m any people are advocating for accelerated urbanization (moving people from suburbs and rural areas).

Sure, that park looks pretty legit. I think that’s with pretty exceptional or those photos aren’t telling the full story—my city has similar parks but behind the photographer would be rows of houses and the city would still be loud around us.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#186

Post by Loughla »

woeh wrote: post #116
vishnugupta wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> making cities more green isn't even _that_ difficult. On the contrary it takes quite a bit of effort to keep the nature at bay. Neglect a corner of your house and next thing you notices small ecosystem developing full with small grass, mold, insects and what not. When Indian cities were locked down for a few months all sorts of birds and animals started appearing in the neighborhood.

Where I live, the city encourages citizens to make tiny gardens against the facades off their building. If you request them, the municipality will pop out some tiles from the sidewalk and supply the soil. The idea is that citizens themselves are then responsible for the gardening, and as you say "keeping nature at bay". The city has become prettier because of it.

>the municipality will pop out some tiles from the sidewalk

Where do you walk, then?

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#188

Post by throwaway894345 »

ryukafalz wrote: post #170
throwaway894345 wrote: post #96

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? 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 sudden…

The US has 2.2 BN acres which is 7 acres for every man, woman, and child, and yet each person resides on maybe 0.05 acres (average lot size is .2 acres divided by average household size of 2.5 people/household is 0.08 rounding down because tens of millions don’t live in a single-family building). There is a tremendous amount of space that isn’t inhabited—much of that is used for farming, but we farm far more than we need—millions of acres could be used for housing.

Anyway, I’m not saying everyone needs to pack up and move out of cities—only that the gospel of urban density sounds dystopian to me.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#189

Post by Loughla »

ryukafalz wrote: post #183
throwaway894345 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m fine with not subsidizing it but we subsidize all sorts of public goods—schools, libraries, etc. It’s not exactly unusual.

Let me rephrase that: why should we subsidize it more than we subsidize the equivalent infrastructure in urban areas? It costs a lot more to provide infrastructure to rural areas than urban ones. If we expect both of these to be fully paid for by our taxes, and if we expect the tax burden to be similar, that means those of us living in cities are subsidizing those living in rural ones. (And note I'm not talking about…

>I'm not talking about actual agricultural industries that require that much space, I'm talking about people living in rural areas just because they like it better. Everyone depends on farms, we can subsidize those

So what about the people who live there to provide education to the farmers' kids? What about the people who work at the local restaurants and grocery stores that serve farmers? What about the people who live there to provide trash service for the people who serve the farmers?

Where does it end and why does it end at that point?

Society [noun]: the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.

It's not like we can lay out roads and say, "this is for farm machinery only, nobody else gets to use it." So, via subsidizing agriculture, you are going to subsidize some people who choose to live out there.

I don't get how you could possibly disentangle that in any way that isn't completely unsustainable. I also don't understand why you would want to; something, something, common good.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#190

Post by devchix »

nicbou wrote: post #110
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…

Europe does this much better. It's not so difficult to find yourself on a quieter, greener path just on your way to work. The countryside has a network of footpaths that connect everything. Wherever I am in Europe, I can count on a quiet evening walk. Berlin is outstanding for this. Wherever you are, it's easy to escape loud traffic and sit in a green, public space. Some have cafés and Biergarten in them. I find retu…

I like the London practice of having a small square of park in the center among the homes. Although it seems a practice of wealthier urban areas, the parks are gated, the home owners have a key and they pay for the upkeep. I don't know how common this is. NYC Central Park is beautiful and vast, but sometimes I wonder if cities need more smaller little parks. There's a lovely lawn behind Rodin's house in Paris where people go and stretch out, tall trees on the perimeter and open space, it's very beautiful and relaxing to view.

Parks and gardens seem an afterthoughts in American urban planning. The National and state parks are gems but not accessible near the cities.

Edited to add, there's a very good Economist article about building miniature forests in cities, I can't find it right now but here's an article that was referenced: https://daily.jstor.org/the-miyawaki-method-a-better-way-to-...

Somebody mentioned Rome downstream, one more thing I love about Rome, all the public fountain water is potable. There's something so awesome about going to the fountain and getting water that you can drink. (Native Romans, don't crush my dreams by telling me I was a dumb tourist and who knows what I drank when I took my chances with the public fountains.)

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