Have you felt a sense of calm and relaxation when you walk around a garden, a park, or a forest? Especially in urban areas, green spaces give a sense of peace in the middle of chaotic urban life. Today, we will explore the benefits of walking in nature.
Types of Nature
Let’s first go over what we mean when we talk about nature. Compared to rural or suburban regions, urban areas often lack access to nature, such as trees, grass, and shrubs. In order to increase access to nature, local governments promote building infrastructure that supports community access. The types of such structures include:
Green Street: a type of street with perennials, shrubs, and trees to capture rain/stormwater and pollutants
Green Space: an open space in an urban setting, such as parks, community gardens, and green roofs.
If you are interested in looking up how much green space your neighborhood has, you can look up the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, which captures the level of green space concentration in a region.
What Are the Benefits of Walking in Nature?
The National Institute on Aging cites a 2022 JAMA Network Open paper studying 13,000 middle-aged women between 2014 and 2016 by a team of researchers from Harvard University and Boston University who found that increasing residential space may be associated with cognitive benefits among middle-aged women. They found that women have higher scores on thinking speed, attention, and overall cognitive score, about 1.2 years younger.
Access to green space may benefit even those who are diagnosed with dementia. A 2020 mixed-review study suggests that there may be benefits for people with dementia to live in a community setting with access to green space and promote horticultural programs, such as green care farms and gardening. A 2018 UK study with 28 participants found that people with mid-late stage dementia experienced increasing mood improvement with increasing time spent in the garden up to 80 minutes.
More research could be funded to better understand the association between increased access to nature and cognitive health. A 2016 systematic review investigating the association between long-term green space exposure and cognition across the life course found a limited number of available studies, most of which were poor or fair quality. Perhaps this is a field that more researchers can investigate. Another 2019 study based on the Ginko Evaluation of Memory Study (GEMS) with 3048 participants found a moderate association between green space exposure and dementia progression among US adults aged over 75 years old.
Access to green space also appears to help young people, who may experience the benefit for a more extended period of their life. A 2017 systematic review of 12 articles studying the effect of green space and the mental well-being of children found that access to green space increases attention restoration, memory, self-discipline, and lower ADHD behaviors.
Another reason that spending time in nature helps cognitive function is that it reduces the risk of depression. Studies have found that spending time in nature reduces the rate of depression. Having depression was also found to be a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia.
There are a couple theories as to what might be happening to our minds when we walk in nature. The Attention-Restoration Theory (ART) hypothesizes that urban environments often have high levels of stimulation that lead to attention fatigue. Some suggested that being in the natural environment can alleviate attention fatigue. Another theory, the Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), hypothesizes that exposure to natural environments reduces physiological and psychological stress, leading to positive emotions.
Study results appear to support both theories. A 2022 EEG study with 63 participants found that walking in nature reduced amygdala activation after the walk in nature compared to walking in an urban environment. Another 2022 EEG study with 42 participants found that even walking while watching 6 1-minute videos of green urban spaces produced more calm, positive emotions.
How Can We Increase Access to Nature?
There could be ways to increase access to green spaces. Here are a few suggestions:
Create mini-forests. A Japanese graduate student, Akira Miyawaki, found ways to grow trees, shrubs, and other plants native to Japan and successfully grew them in small patches of urban land.
Use your building’s roof. Building a garden on your roof could help reduce energy use and create a space for the residents/office workers to rest.
Summary
In this post, we explored types of green space, how green space gives emotional and cognitive benefits, what could be mechanism that works, and how we can increase access to green space. If you have more ideas that you would like to share on how to increase green space, please comment below! We hope this post has helped you understand the importance of exposure to green space and building more of them.
in that moment, I happened to stare up towards the brown-bricked wall painted in plain lemon yellow color and the orange sunset light all that refracted light from branches fell on the wall, silently, and softly.
at that moment, I remembered vaguely yes, I used to think sentimentally. I used to smile nostalgically at the warmth of a mother bird cooing the babies in her nest, ever so protected from outside word, so warm and fuzzy and soft and safe — I almost forgot that previous version of me, which, I think is only a thought or two away from now, used to have overflowing feelings.
I — it was at that moment I realized — had promised myself that I would come back. that once all these battles incurred by pesty intruders were finished, I’d come back. That we would smile, feel easy with trust, and make jokes whose smile won’t stop once we were done with just this one job.
but then I saw my hands and they were rusty they were the hands that tasted the prize. they were hungry and the would not stop. everything made sense. everything was logical. everything was justified. my heart was hallowed with flames of justice. my spine, thickened with battle scars.
then, alone in the park, when no one wanted me, I stared at the bricked wall, bouncing off the warm orange sunset light with shades of bare tree branches, and I realized: I used to be soft. I used to have feelings. I used to cry for the mother bird.
when I stop, will I ever lay my head again to the soft songs in the warmth and beauty? will I be forgiven? will I know it was worth it at the end?
I walked back from the park and the darkness fell but that light in my eyes wouldn’t go away. perhaps it is the beginning of everything after all.
Ralph with Coffee 