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

191–200 of 303 posts

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#191

Post by carapace »

koboll wrote: post #95

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".

Thank you! Sheesh! Nature is the, uh, state of Nature. As you say, it's the baseline. So really: "Civilization has enormous emotional and cognitive burdens on people." is the actual situation.

Natural systems are effectively infinite fractals, most urban structures are flat and relatively featureless by comparison. Living in a city is sensory deprivation combined with overwhelming discordant stimuli (engines and sirens mostly.) And that's before you get to the incredible chemical burden of living in a city. In fact, until very recently, cities were populations sinks. People died in cities faster than they were born.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#192

Post by scythe »

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 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.

We're not only conserving space, we're conserving distance. Consider a uniformly populated city with a circular boundary (spherical cow). For a density of X, the mean distance from anyone's residence to nature is L. If that density becomes 2X, that distance is now 0.7L. A denser city directly puts its residents closer to nature — real nature, although we can't move the mountains!

Your argument is a complaint about the size of cities, which is mostly orthogonal to density (Honolulu is much denser than Atlanta!).

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#193

Post by throwaway894345 »

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…

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

I don’t think we should in the general case, but I also don’t think we should abruptly pull funding from one area (letting the infrastructure fall apart) just because it becomes abruptly fashionable to move out of that area in the near term (we’re talking about decades long time scales here). Seems like you should want some easing so you don’t have to rebuild from scratch if/when dynamics change.

But ultimately if you want less spending on rural infrastructure, that’s probably fine with me, but then don’t also complain when rural life is a luxury for the wealthy.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#195

Post by fillskills »

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…

At HealingGardens.co we are bringing people closer to nature. We served 1400 customers so far in 1 year and plan to do more.

Actively looking for a cofounder who can develop full stack. If interested, please email abhi@healinggardens.co

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#196

Post by Tade0 »

zoover2020 wrote: post #169
theK wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Personally I don't enjoy cyclists zipping around me on the sidewalk and cycle paths require space, so to me they sort of are.

Of course you can remove roads to create cycle paths, but there's a point at which this starts to affect public transport and services - after all it's not just cars that use the roads.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#197

Post by joshgev »

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…

Attitudes vary from person to person, but I don't really think being 20 minutes from nature really counts. I lived in Paris until recently and had a really rough time for a few reasons, but the biggest one is was the lack of green places to walk. Whenever I brought it up to anyone, people would say "oh, what about Bois de Boulogne or Bois de Vincennes?" Both were inaccessible by foot from where I lived due to distance and would take 30 minutes to get to by public transit. So what's the idea, then? We should budget an hour in a subway tunnel each day so we can spend some time in a park? That's no way to live; nature isn't something we should treat like a museum. It is something we should feel a part of.

For me, thankfully, there was an easy solution: I moved to one of the towns just outside of the city. Now I have ample access to lots of trees, birds, flowers, etc. If I get on my bike, which I do frequently, I can be in some really beautiful regional parks within 40 minutes or so, and the ride there ain't too bad either.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#198

Post by alistairSH »

devchix wrote: post #190
nicbou wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Those gardens in London are privately owned and maintained. And far from ubiquitous - they’re mostly in wealthy areas.

It’s nice that they exist. But it’s not so nice that they’re a perk for the rich and not accessible by an average resident.

And AFAIK, there is no planning rule that requires they be added with new (re-)development. Only maintaining what’s there.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#199

Post by silicon2401 »

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…

> There are plenty of dense places with incredible nature within just an hours drive.

What a hilarious example of what the original commenter was saying. Apparently you think having nature an hour away is acceptable, or at least counts as being close to nature. As a very anti-urban person, I consider that nightmarish. I'm glad other people like that kind of world, and hope they all keep moving to the cities to leave the rest of the world open and spacious for the rest of us.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#200

Post by throwaway894345 »

stephen_g wrote: post #109
cancelkooks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very pro-pedestrian / anti-car, but that’s in the context of how to actually get around town most of the time… obviously (to me) you use the car to leave town and see the wonders of our world. If people that live in cities are to be relegated to never leave, I for one am not interested.

Yeah, cities that have good enough transit, you often don't need to own a car, and can use an on-demand rental service for this kind of thing. (You locate a nearby car in the app and then unlock it through the app when you get to it). It's usually way, way cheaper than owning a car, and handy because for example, if you need to move stuff, you can get a van, and otherwise you can get a smaller car. You don't fall int…

> It's usually way, way cheaper than owning a car

It’s usually cheaper than each person owning their own car, but more expensive than a household sharing a car. Of course, this varies widely from city to city and it depends on how often people rent cars or use rideshare or taxis.

The nice thing is you get fast, comfortable transit all the time, but the really nice thing is how much stuff you take advantage of that you might not otherwise. For example, I’m already paying for a car, so going on big road trips is only a marginal extra cost (rather than $100/day + hassle for a car rental). Similarly, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into camping if I had to rent a car for each trip. I probably also wouldn’t visit family as often.

I definitely see the appeal of not needing to own a car, but I tried it and it wasn’t for me. For my city, I’d love to see them start by cleaning up and policing existing public transit (for example) and then scale up from there.

Post reply on HN