Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 210 posts

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#191

Post by Engineering-MD »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #168
lazyasciiart wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people go through a period of time where they are 'dating' someone but not ready to move in.

Yep this is the stay over for the weekend (and some weeknights stage). Totally doable up to a 2hr commute.

But it reduces the conversion of initial dating to something more permanent. Living nearby and being able to meet up at the last minute with little effort makes it so much easier, I think it’s why socialising at university is so much easier.

Living further away requires a greater activation energy to lead to stable bonding.

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#192

Post by davidjnelson »

akurilin wrote: post #19
mpweiher wrote: post #10

One of the reasons I love Berlin. City. With LOTS and LOTS of trees.

Same with the area around Golden Gate Park in SF, being close to so much well-maintained and curated nature is delightful. The place is a real treasure.

Ya if you want to live in SF and have trees, Mill Valley is a far better choice in my experience.

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#193

Post by davidjnelson »

PorterDuff wrote: post #124

I think of high contrast areas as having the strongest mood boosting. By that I mean river fronts, visible mountain ranges, the beach, the edges of forests. No doubt trees in cities are visually pleasing, living in the middle of dark dense forest not so much. 'round these parts, trees seem to perform two useful functions. They fall on houses during storms (quite common) or they burn down whole towns. Be careful what…

Right, Paradise CA is a great example of how dangerous that can be. Sure was a beautiful place though!

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#194

Post by davidjnelson »

jerryalex wrote: post #44

What are some great cities with surrounding nature for software engineers? I was looking at Atlanta, GA which I heard has the most trees for a city. According to Wikipedia, it has 47.9% tree coverage

For the Bay Area, probably the best bets are Los Gatos if you work on the peninsula and Mill Valley if you work in the city ( San Francisco ). Requires a roughly one hour commute though, depending on time of day and the parking situation.

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#195

Post by davidjnelson »

devmunchies wrote: post #131
jerryalex wrote: post #44

What are some great cities with surrounding nature for software engineers? I was looking at Atlanta, GA which I heard has the most trees for a city. According to Wikipedia, it has 47.9% tree coverage

Sacramento has the "City of Trees" nickname. https://medium.californiasun.co/sacramento-city-of-trees-207... IMO Sac is the best location in California if you're a outdoorsmen but need to be close to a city. I live 30 minutes east in the mountains and work from home.

If you live more towards Grass Valley it is gorgeous, but wow the greater Sacramento area is pretty devoid of nature. I would argue Chico is way more beautiful, if you are working from home already.

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#196

Post by jdietrich »

learc83 wrote: post #183
jdietrich wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the same as controlling for socio-economic status. A millennial living in a city-center apartment and a boomer living in a paid-up house in the suburbs might have the same income, but they have very different life circumstances and experience very different levels of stress.

They also controlled for "age, sex, annual household income, economic status (eg, employed, retired, or unemployed), highest educational qualification, and couple status". Taken together those are likely to capture socio-economic status in all but a few edge cases. With a very large study size, and a huge result (30% difference) it's unlikely that it can be explained by socioeconomic status. The study discusses this…

>Taken together those are likely to capture socio-economic status in all but a few edge cases.

Socio-economic status is notoriously difficult to control for.

https://academic.oup.com/bmb/article/81-82/1/21/282643

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#197

Post by tomatotomato37 »

Symmetry wrote: post #48
tunesmith wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or something else causes both healthy people and living near trees.

The obvious one being wealthy people -> wealthy community | | v v good health trees

The problem with that is tree coverage drastically goes up again when you hit "broken washing machine on lawn" levels of poverty due to just the general amount of old growth in rural poor areas

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#198

Post by Razengan »

It's a bizarre, comical state when obvious things such as this (and similar posts like "Climate change will cause a financial crisis!") have to be explicitly spelled out and backed with "data."

That said, modern civilization, technology and "nature" don't have to be mutually exclusive.

See Japan, Switzerland, Singapore and similar places where there is plenty of unspoiled/augmented nature right next to some of the most modern/luxurious human habitats in the world.

The ideal balance would be something like the sci-fi'ish concept of arcologies [0]; monolithic, self-sufficient, clean megastructures surrounded by natural wildernesses for people to escape to at their leisure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#199

Post by graeme »

dTal wrote: post #188
graeme wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is in central park: https://www.travelblog.org/Photos/514446 Most is not like that mind you. But not bad for a city forest

Not the original complainer, but that looks quite sterile to me. Apart from the trees there's very little vegetation, beyong the odd fern - no moss, no rotting logs, no undergrowth or leaf-mold floor. It doesn't look moist enough. Just dry, dusty dirt.

Those are paths people walked on. Since there’s a lot of foot traffic they’re wider than regular forests.

But yeah, it’a city forest. Not the same as wild, but more forest-ty than the discussion implied I think. Most visitors only see the south park of central park.

Re: Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing

#200

Post by 0_gravitas »

neop1x wrote: post #186
0_gravitas wrote: post #49

I wonder if green space and trees still improve well being if someone is allergic to them (not deathly so, just enough to be a nuisance). I myself am especially allergic to the flora around me, and I always dream of moving somewhere cold where everything is nice and dead and can't hurt me.

there are lots of species and often you are not allergic to all of them + there are some antihistamine pills ;)

The way that it seems to work judging by blood tests I've gotten over my life is that the more I'm around something, the more allergic I become, all of the things around me, the trees, the animals, the food I eat, etc. I've become extremely allergic to. If I go somewhere with completely new plant life I should be ok in theory, I have done this once and my allergens were pretty much gone, but I dont have reason to assume that they wouldn't come back. I've got some fucky gene stuff going on in general, and there are other reasons why the cold would be nice in general.. and i can guarantee that i have an extensive morning/night drug regimen, and have tried about every allergy med i could get my hands on, they can take the edge off, but it will never go away.
Post reply on HN