4. The Natural Environment, Built Environment, and Social Environment

BREAKOUT SESSION SUMMARY AND AGENDA

Thursday, February 1, 2007, from 1:30-5:00 pm

Chair: William Sullivan, Associate Professor and Director of the Environmental Council, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Discussants:

• Kofi Boone, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, North Carolina State University
• Stephen R. Kellert, Tweedy Ordway Professor of Social Ecology, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
• Nancy Wells, Assistant Professor, Design and Environmental Analysis, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University

Summary

Three decades of research demonstrates that exposure to everyday nature (e.g., green spaces, trees, grass, gardens) promotes healthy social and cognitive functioning among humans. In spite of these consistent findings, public policies and the physical design of places rarely reflect the capacity of green settings to promote human well-being [i]. Moreover, individuals in different socioeconomic and ethnic groups have unequal access to green places and thus the positive benefits they bestow [ii]. The unequal access occurs in two ways: there are simply fewer green spaces in some communities, and many of the green spaces that do exist disregard the perceptions, needs, and preferences of minority communities [iii].

Natural settings play a far more important role in the well-being of individuals who live in poor areas than has previously been recognized. In public housing neighborhoods, green neighborhood spaces tend to attract residents outdoors, thereby increasing opportunities for social encounters among neighbors, and ultimately fostering the development of stronger neighborhood social ties [iv].  Higher levels of greenness in these spaces tend to increase the amount of informal surveillance within them and therefore increase the sense of safety that residents experience [v].  In several studies, greener common spaces predicted fewer incivilities (noise, vandalism, and graffiti) [vi], and most surprisingly, lower levels of crime [vii], including less domestic violence [viii].  Thus, in public housing neighborhoods, green spaces influence not only the strength of community, but also the degree of safety experienced by the residents.

In addition to these benefits, having regular contact with natural settings has positive implications for cognitive functioning. A longitudinal study that tracked levels of greenness immediately outside of a child’s initial home and the home they moved to found that greenness of the new home positively predicted the child’s cognitive functioning: the greener the new home’s surroundings, the better the child performed on standard tests of cognitive functioning [ix]. In a series of studies that compared individuals who had exposure to spaces that were more or less green, the findings were also compelling. Children diagnosed with ADD suffer fewer symptoms after playtime in green outdoor settings [x], and children living in green environments play in more developmentally advanced ways [xi] and score higher on tests of attention [xii]. Workers employed in buildings with natural elements reported they were more effective [xiii]. In two public housing neighborhoods, women living in greener areas coped better with poverty and expressed more optimism about their lives [xiv].  Similarly, nearby nature has also been found to bolster resilience and psychological well-being among rural children (Wells & Evans, 2003) [xv].

Clearly, everyday exposure to nature is a crucial component of a healthy and successful life. In this session, we will identify up to ten recommendations that will improve the scientific basis for decision-making related to the preservation, development, and distribution of green spaces in urban areas across th