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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

#211

Post by gmac »

dlkf wrote: post #129
gmac wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two points on this: (1) If you want to know how people feel, I’m afraid self-reports are the gold standard (2) Some other studies have large sample sizes (e.g. this one, which is based on my PhD: https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/49376/1/Mourato_Happiness_greater_... )

> If you want to know how people feel, I’m afraid self-reports are the gold standard "How people feel" can't directly be measured scientifically, but it is a function of many things, some of which can be measured reliably (weight, blood pressure, money, etc). I'd rather have a reliable measurement of quantity that I believe contributes to well-being than a direct measurement of well-being that I think is unreliable.…

> I'd rather have a reliable measurement of quantity that I believe contributes to well-being than a direct measurement of well-being that I think is unreliable.

Sometimes there's a difficult trade-off here, especially since (un)reliability isn't binary.

But a heavy prioritisation of reliability over direct measurement (which seems to be your position) is probably why governments have spent decades obsessing over GDP, which is a very poor wellbeing measure for all sorts of reasons.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#212

Post by alistairSH »

kaybe wrote: post #208
alistairSH wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As long as you can look into it from the street you'll have some benefit at least. Walking along other people's gardens can be quite relaxing too as long as high walls are not allowed.

There’s a mix - some are walled off, some internal to housing (interior of a block), some just fenced off.

The Eaton Square viewed on Google Maps shows a variety. The main square is shoulder-high iron fencing. But many blocks have walked or internal gardens.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#213

Post by ryukafalz »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #188
ryukafalz wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Sure, there’s plenty of space out in the middle of nowhere. But can you imagine the scale of the infrastructure that would be required to turn so much of that into living space? Think streets, water, sewer, power, food distribution, etc.

Anyway, I’m not saying everyone should live in concrete jungles either. Think more like the Netherlands than New York City.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#214

Post by mathematicaster »

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…

European expat here. My experience on the Canadian west coast is quiet the opposite.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#215

Post by ryukafalz »

Loughla wrote: post #189
ryukafalz wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Sure, you can’t completely disentangle those things. But providing services to far-out communities takes a disproportionate amount of resources; if we pretend that it doesn’t and make it seem just as cheap as living in urban areas, we’re just encouraging more people to move out there who don’t need to. We’ve already got a ton of crumbling infrastructure and that’s in part because we’ve built too much of it to possibly maintain and it’s catching up to us.

I’m not saying I have all the answers, but something has to give.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#216

Post by [deleted] »

User23 wrote: post #85
yongjik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unless you’re Amish or otherwise plain living, the rural lifestyle is exceedingly automobile dependent.

[deleted]

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#217

Post by supergarfield »

baby-yoda wrote: post #201
ogig wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been involved in the design of a green neighborhood in my city [1][2]. We spent quite some time taking in account as much considerations for sustainability and integration with the environment. It wasn't easy, at all. The hardest part, still fully unsolved, is operating with current legislation and outdated city planning rules. Those normatives revolve around high density and cheap development. Nature takes spac…

> The hardest part, still fully unsolved, is operating with current legislation and outdated city planning rules. Those normatives revolve around high density and cheap development. Nature takes space and efficient buildings are expensive so housing constructors will have a hard time buying into the green zone. where i live there is constant discussion of "we need high density housing" and this is exactly what comes…

You can do high density without block housing! Many European cities are good examples of this. Paris, for instance, has very high density because it's packed with mid-rise (~7-8 floors) buildings[1]. Another good example is the section of Manhattan between Midtown and Lower Manhattan, which is also primarily mid-rise and very dense.

Apart from that I do think it's true that block housing separated by large parks (as shown in your picture) doesn't work well; it's discussed in e.g. Jacob's _The Death and Life of Great American Cities_.

[1]: https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/6238/5b71/3e4b/31a8/5...

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#218

Post by jasonladuke0311 »

I found a huge increase in happiness when I moved from Vegas to Denver. I am outside much more often and frequently have the windows open at home. Supposedly the presence of trees has been shown to improve mood (no citation, read the abstract on HN somewhere). Of course, there have been other life changes that have contributed but I feel this is a large reason.

Re: Nature has enormous emotional and cognitive benefits on people

#220

Post by aqme28 »

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…

I live in Berlin. I can take public transit to the forest or beautiful swimmable lakes. And there are tons of parks within the city.
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