Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
more curious about food sources and processing. However the health benefits do
not simply come from being
in
green areas. The growing evidence on this issue has
led to some health care centres, such as one in Waterloo (Iowa), creating over fifty
types of gardens for patients to walk or work in. Of course this is a major extension
of older ideas. Howard's Garden Cities had a Green Belt which contained hospitals.
Hospital research has also shown that views of green areas have helped adult
hospital patients recover more quickly from illness (Ulrich
1984
, Pretty et al
2005
).
Experiments are also under way to create computer generated images of natural
landscapes being shown to patients who are surrounded by the alien and perhaps
frightening equipment of modern medicine. So patients are not simply provided
with images of natural environments, which have been shown to have therapeutic
value, but are able to create virtual realities in which patients can add themselves
into to natural landscapes and take tours in such areas. In addition, there has been
increasing interest in the value what is now called the 'walkability' of various ar-
eas in cities. This has led to attempts to measure the opportunities for walking,
to improve these opportunities through the introduction of more green areas and
pathways, as well as the encouragement of people to walk more, for fitness, or to
obtain basic needs from local shops, rather than driving. All these health and social
benefits are providing increasingly strong motivations for policies designed to in-
crease the greening of cities, especially given the increasing obesity of people in
many countries. For example, one third of Americans adults are obese, which costs
$ 147 billion in 2008 in health care costs because this condition increases the risk
of other diseases (McMahon
2012
). Hence health care practitioners are becoming
increasingly aware of issues that used to be the preserve of urban designers. People
who live in areas with parks and trails have been shown to be twice as healthy as
those who live in areas without such features.
In addition, a link has been shown to exist between crime and greening. Re-
cent research by crime and safety specialists has shown the presence of even small
amounts of green space and trees helps to reduce tensions and crimes in cities,
especially in the high density, over-concreted inner city environments of public
housing projects, as seen in the work of researchers in the Landscape and Human
Health Laboratory in the University of Illinois's Urbana campus (LHHL
2012
, Kuo
and Sullivan,
2001
). Other works have shown the human value of trees in the city
(Donovan and Butry
2010
)) and even claimed that areas of large trees have lower
crime rates, although this may be a casual association with high income areas not a
causal connection (Donovan and Prestemon
2012
).
A new source of support for adding green space in urban places comes from the
recognition of a fifth set of advantages, this time in
environmental terms
, for green-
ing provides physical advantages. This is not simply from the therapeutic advan-
tages but from real economic benefits derived from natural processes that reduce
problems, whereas alternative actions to solve them involve very high costs. For
example, trees, especially forests, absorb significant amounts of the carbon dioxide
and particles produced by human activity, especially from fossil fuel emissions, and
also generate increased oxygen supply to an environment, thereby improving the
local atmosphere. Wetlands also allow plants to absorb many pollutants in run-off
