Wildness And Wellbeing: Nature, Neuroscience, And Urban Design 9813299223, 9789813299221, 9789813299238

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 5
Acknowledgments......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
List of Figures......Page 11
1.1 Introduction......Page 12
1.2 Pathology and the City......Page 15
1.3 Nature, Place, and Mental Health......Page 18
1.4 Rethinking Our Urban Ecology......Page 24
1.5 Neuroscience and Design......Page 27
1.6 Methodology and Aims......Page 30
1.7 Conclusion......Page 32
References......Page 33
2.1 Introduction......Page 51
2.2 How Close?......Page 52
2.3 How Much?......Page 55
2.4 How Often?......Page 56
2.5 Urban Ecologies and the Problem of ‘Authenticity’......Page 58
2.6 Wild Urban Natures......Page 62
References......Page 66
3.1 Introduction......Page 81
3.2 Accumulated Exposures, Stress, and Mental Health......Page 83
3.3.1 Viewing......Page 85
3.3.2 Listening......Page 90
3.3.3 Enrichment......Page 91
3.3.4 Moving......Page 92
3.3.5 Feeling......Page 95
3.3.6 Immersion......Page 97
3.3.7 Fluctuations......Page 101
3.4 Conclusion......Page 102
References......Page 103
4.1 Introduction......Page 121
4.2 Urban Nature: Immediate, Incidental, and Incremental......Page 123
4.3 Design Principles and Strategies......Page 125
4.3.1 Turn Attention Back to Our Streets......Page 126
4.3.2 Create or Cultivate Small Places en Route......Page 128
4.3.3 Let Urban Nature Be Wild......Page 132
4.3.4 Rethink Mobility and Movement......Page 135
4.3.5 Create Space for Temporality and Flux......Page 138
4.4 Conclusion......Page 140
References......Page 141
Chapter 5: Conclusions......Page 155
References......Page 162
Index......Page 164

Citation preview

Wildness and Wellbeing Nature, Neuroscience, and Urban Design

Zoë Myers

Wildness and Wellbeing “Zoë Myers has tackled a subject that is long overdue—the need to re-wild urban places to better support our mental health and wellbeing. In addition to putting forth reams of compelling evidence, Myers offers sound and practical design principles and strategies to give people immediate, incidental, and incremental access to urban nature, the key to wellbeing in the city.” —Claire Latané, Ecological Designer and Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona “This important and timely book rigorously draws together evidence from a wide range of disciplines to reveal the benefits of urban nature for human mental health and wellbeing. Considering the growing burden of mental ill-health globally, Wildness and Wellbeing convincingly makes the case for everyday urban nature beyond park provision, to rethink cities as places where diverse species are invited to flourish in every possible nook and cranny, no matter how awkward. Essential reading in troubling times.” —Dr Cecily Maller, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University, Australia “In this new book, Zoë Myers takes on the challenging task of integrating insights from diverse disciplines to explore evidence behind the myriad links between urban nature, mental health and urban design. Wildness and Wellbeing offers valuable insights for both those new to the field, and experienced practitioners keen to engage with tensions in understanding how and why different people respond to nature in the ways they do, and opportunities for addressing this complexity through design.” —Dr Sarah Bell, European Centre for Environment and Human Health, and University of Exeter Medical School, UK

Zoë Myers

Wildness and Wellbeing Nature, Neuroscience, and Urban Design

Zoë Myers Australian Urban Design Research Centre University of Western Australia Perth, WA, Australia

ISBN 978-981-32-9922-1    ISBN 978-981-32-9923-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9923-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

Imagine a city: Streets in which it feels like the natural world reaches out to greet you, with a sensory atmosphere to both encourage liveliness and creativity. A city where the buildings and infrastructure are nested within a peppering of irregular, multisensory, organic, and incidental natural spaces, such that nature becomes an everyday interaction. Bees buzz in colorful pollinators beside your window. The footpath you walk to get to the bus or school is lined with wild verges filled with fruit trees, native plants, and vegetables which change from day to day, week to week, season to season. Stormwater drains previously hidden behind fences are converted into streams that are alive with the sound of frogs and insects, and that encourage you to cut through the back of neighborhoods, avoiding traffic. Slightly unkempt grasses grow alongside shops, through cracks in the footpaths, and between buildings, softening the brick facade, where you see beetles and ladybugs crawl. Wildflowers capture gentle attention with their shapes and scents, and diverse and messy compositions along fences. Unusual surfaces and textures encourage you to reach out and feel the stem of a plant, or focus on the position of your foot, or entice you to move differently. Laneways overflow with low hanging leaves that show the presence of the wind. Birds come and go, and call and sing and squawk in the trees of overgrown pocket parks that create stepping stones of mini-­ restorative experiences throughout the city. The many opportunities to actively ‘be’ and feel the breeze on your face or hear the rain on a tree branch. In this city, nature is no longer restricted to the park or the reserve. It is no longer a destination to visit on the weekend; it isn’t an aesthetic, or an v

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amenity to be used. It is an assemblage of non-curated, independent, living elements with which you interact and engage—an embodied and cumulative exposure to nature. This is not an eco-utopia, away from technologies, people, or modern living, but the relaxation of boundaries between ‘nature’ and ‘urban’ in a way that could profoundly affect the mental health and wellbeing of our communities. Perth, WA, Australia

Zoë Myers

Acknowledgments

This book emerged from a number of years of research, but the bulk of it was completed over the 2018/19 Australian summer. For a book about nature, mental health, and urban design this was a fairly perfect context: the heat, flies, flowers, summer storms, lizards, early sunrises and late sunsets, noisy streets, and happy people out late enjoying their holidays under clear skies, all reminded me that we are part of an ecosystem that involves the messy hybridity of urban and natural elements. I firstly acknowledge that I live and work on Whadjuk Noongar land, cared for by their traditional custodians for thousands of years. I pay respects to Elders, past, present, and future, and honor their continuing connection to, and care of, these lands, waters, and community. Thank you to Joshua Pitt and his team at Palgrave Macmillan, who have been wonderful to work with and made this process smooth and enjoyable. I was fortunate to have two generous readers of earlier drafts of this book: Dr Cecily Maller, and Dr Sarah Bell. Thank you for your excellent, considered, and insightful feedback on this work, and even more so your personal warmth and encouragement. Thank you also to Claire Latané who reviewed the almost-final draft and offered such a positive response. I have had enormous support from my colleagues and friends at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre. A special shout out to the wonderful Grace Oliver who was my cheerleader and coffee-bringer throughout.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Specific photo credits and my huge gratitude to Melissa Soh (Berlin) and Melanie Thomson (Melbourne) for taking pictures of wild places for me. Your beautiful photos add so much to this book. Thank you to my family members who contributed photos from around the world  and your ever-present support and love. I am also incredibly grateful to those of you who reviewed this book at various stages, including just before its final submission, with such care and attention to detail. For many other friends  who have been with me on this project, for those who read sections of chapters, gave loud affirmations, and logistical assistance: thank you for your friendship, help, and enthusiasm. And to  my dear little  family: You have made me want a wilder and healthier world even more.

Contents

1 Our Nature in/of the City  1 1.1 Introduction  1 1.2 Pathology and the City  4 1.3 Nature, Place, and Mental Health  7 1.4 Rethinking Our Urban Ecology 13 1.5 Neuroscience and Design 16 1.6 Methodology and Aims 19 1.7 Conclusion 21 References 22 2 Reimagining an Urban Nature 41 2.1 Introduction 41 2.2 How Close? 42 2.3 How Much? 45 2.4 How Often? 46 2.5 Urban Ecologies and the Problem of ‘Authenticity’ 48 2.6 Wild Urban Natures 52 2.7 Conclusion 56 References 56 3 Multisensory Nature and Mental Health 71 3.1 Introduction 71 3.2 Accumulated Exposures, Stress, and Mental Health 73 ix

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3.3 Nature and the Senses 75 3.3.1 Viewing 75 3.3.2 Listening 80 3.3.3 Enrichment 81 3.3.4 Moving 82 3.3.5 Feeling 85 3.3.6 Immersion 87 3.3.7 Fluctuations 91 3.4 Conclusion 92 References 93 4 Urban Nature and Designing for Mental Health111 4.1 Introduction111 4.2 Urban Nature: Immediate, Incidental, and Incremental113 4.3 Design Principles and Strategies115 4.3.1 Turn Attention Back to Our Streets116 4.3.2 Create or Cultivate Small Places en Route118 4.3.3 Let Urban Nature Be Wild122 4.3.4 Rethink Mobility and Movement125 4.3.5 Create Space for Temporality and Flux128 4.4 Conclusion130 References131 5 Conclusions145 References152 Index155

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5 Fig. 3.6 Fig. 3.7 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5 Fig. 4.6 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Road reserve, Melbourne, Australia Urban orchard, Perth, Australia Street planter, Berlin, Germany Vacant lot, Melbourne, Australia Laneway, Melbourne, Australia Post-industrial site, Zurich, Switzerland Spontaneous vegetation, Split, Croatia Street planter, Berlin, Germany Verges and gardens, Perth, Australia Urban wetland vegetation, Perth, Australia Potted plants, Split, Croatia Urban orchard, Perth, Australia Road reserve, Melbourne, Australia Creek, Melbourne, Australia Urban park, Zurich, Switzerland Canal, Berlin, Germany Verges and gardens, Perth, Australia Vacant lot/playspace, Berlin, Germany Road reserve, Melbourne, Australia Path, Berlin, Germany Grasses, Zurich, Switzerland Community garden, Perth, Australia Street planters, Melbourne, Australia Urban orchard, Perth, Australia

3 9 15 19 43 47 50 52 55 73 77 79 83 84 88 89 114 115 119 121 123 129 148 150

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CHAPTER 1

Our Nature in/of the City

Abstract  This chapter presents the rationale for needing to urgently turn our attention to how urban stressors, ecological degradation and climate change can be detrimental for our mental health and wellbeing, and the potential for embodied and relational interactions with urban ecologies to counter this. This chapter introduces the applicability of neuroscience to design, and how it contributes to a complementary perspective. Here it is argued that  combining a land use approach focusing on leftover, in-­ between land, with allowing wild urban natures, will be most equitable, accessible, and accumulative for providing opportunities for nature interactions that can foster mental health and wellbeing. Keywords  Mental health • Urban design • Nature • Ecology • Neuroscience

1.1   Introduction Cities are significant to almost all elements of current research as most of us live, or will soon live, within them. It is an oft-cited—and admittedly redundant (McHale et al. 2015)—estimate that by 2050 70% of the global population will live in cities (United Nations 2014). While the scale and diversity of our urban environments differ wildly—indeed it is problematic that “the urban is treated as an empirically self-evident, universal category corresponding to a particular type of bounded settlement space, the ‘city’” © The Author(s) 2020 Z. Myers, Wildness and Wellbeing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9923-8_1

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(Brenner and Schmid 2015, p. 163)—their impact is vastly disproportionate to global health, be that environmental, ecological, economic, social, or  psychological. Of these, until recently, psychological health has been somewhat neglected in the face of more dramatic or urgent concerns. It is also considered a largely personal phenomenon, treated at the individual level, with antidepressants and other medications, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and talk therapy, among others. Addressing it in the context of design and planning requires an acceptance of it being a collective demographic symptom of urban life that at least in part relates to the physical and sensory environments, and that spatial intervention into these areas is therefore a pragmatic, rational, and vital priority for the future wellbeing of our cities’ residents. The urgency of this issue has not gone unnoticed. Since 2015 mental health and wellbeing have been included in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, and the World Health Organisation’s Mental Health Action Plan 2013–2020 (2013) recognizes the essential role of mental health, which it defines as a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community. (p. 38)

In 2011, Yale psychologists Kazdin and Blase (2011) argued that individual psychotherapy—with its cost-inhibiting factors and lack of adequate resourcing—needed innovative reinterpretations, platforms, and modes to meet the exponential needs of a distressed populace. In response, researchers from the University of Chicago urged the uptake of a long-overdue public health approach to mental health (Atkins and Frazier 2011). It is within this context that the physical environment can be seen as a logical way for those outside the health professions, in areas such as design, to offer evidence-based spatial and sensory interventions to this field (Lang and Rayner 2012). This is a book, then, that seeks to explore intersecting research questions at the nexus of city and human, nature and form, science and design, to ask: In what specific ways can urban design use neuroscience that supports the positive effects of nature on mental health? What might be required of us with regard to reconceptualizing ‘nature’ in order to revisit these ideas in a more nuanced, agile way? How might we, in Söderström et al.’s words, “unpack ‘the city’” (2016): “to see it as a heterogeneous,

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non-deterministic and enabling milieu, rather than as an undifferentiated factor of psychic stress” (p. 105), to rethink the standard vernaculars of how people are perceived in design and planning? Here, then, I also choose to use the term ‘wellbeing’, which is “situated and relational, an effect of mutually constitutive interactions amongst the material, organic and emotional dynamics of places” (Atkinson 2013, p. 138). Its efficacy is to enable a broad individual approach to ‘feeling well’; one that can allow a more temporal and personal definition of health. To this end, a focus on both mental health and wellbeing broadens the scope of positive nature interactions. Two excellent concepts have provided a starting point for the work here. Firstly, Fitzgerald and colleagues’ proposal of a ‘neuropolis’: the city as one that holds the potential to enable “healthy neurological functioning in its citizens, and thereby a space that fosters individual and collective flourishing” (p. 231). This city, encompassing a field of sensory perceptions and neurological engagement as well as the social political structures that frame it, offers an opportunity to revisit interactions between individual and environment through the brain. This complements Wolch’s ‘zoöpolis’; a

Fig. 1.1  Road reserve, Melbourne, Australia

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“renaturalized, re-enchanted city” (1996, p. 29); one in which encounters with animals and nature are experienced with immediacy and cultivate coexistence. These vivid ideas of how cities can be reimagined, through engagement of our bodies and with the natural environment we are embedded within, offer compelling directions for urban design. And so, this is where this book ultimately lands: that creating and  fostering genuinely healthy, diverse natures in our cities is fundamental for both people and the environment. We not only can do both; it is in our best interests to do both (Fig. 1.1).

1.2   Pathology and the City There are undoubtedly many wonderful and beneficial aspects of living in a city. Social connection, economic advantage, cultural and educational opportunities are only some of the ways being a city dweller can positively add to life experience. However, detrimental influences are well-­ noted:  increasing congestion and density; air, noise, water, and soil pollution; social disconnect and isolation; loss of habitats; as well as increasing economic disparity and work-related stress, increasing health issues such as cardiovascular disease (Vandasova et al. 2016; Yitshak-Sade et  al. 2017). Thirteen percent of all global childhood asthma cases this year (2019) are estimated to be from traffic pollution (Achakulwisut et al. 2019, p. e170); 64% being in urban areas (or 90% if including adjacent suburban areas) (p. e175), and 92% of which would occur in areas under the permitted pollution guidelines (p. e170). Furthermore, these effects do not respect urban boundaries but have global impact (Ngo et al. 2018). With regard to psychological health the evidence is also troubling. One in four people worldwide will suffer a significant mental health episode in their lifetime. Mental health issues are insidious, and have diffuse effect: in terms of global health burdens, the emphasis has shifted to chronic conditions and non-communicable diseases, with depression being the largest category of disability (World Health Organisation 2017, p. 5). There was no decrease in recorded rates of anxiety and depression in Australia, Canada, England, and the United States between 1990 and 2015 (Jorm 2017); however, there was a 41% increase in the prescription of antidepressants between 2002 and 2007 in Australia, for instance (Hollingworth et al. 2010, p. 515). While there is some concern that these figures are due to a lowered threshold for diagnosis (Baxter et al. 2014) (in part potentially explained by the expansion of definitions and reliance on symptoms for diagnosis) (p. 513), there has undoubtedly been a significant increase in mood affliction, whether clinical

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or otherwise. There is also a tremendous economic cost, both through productivity and treatment (Chisholm et al. 2016; Lee et al. 2017). Depression (here used to refer to Major Depressive Disorder) is an illness characterized by feelings of sadness, lack of enthusiasm, and irritability (Leistedt and Linkowski 2013, p. 55), though it manifests differently for each person, and thus can be considered a heterogeneous group of symptoms (Hacimusalar and Eşel 2018). It is significantly associated with rumination, a mental behavior, whereby you get ‘stuck’ rethinking something over and over. Anxiety is an umbrella term to refer to a wide range of maladies from the general to the specific, but which are characterized by intrusive thoughts, nervous energy, and fears (World Health Organisation 2017, p. 7). Individuals often suffer from both concurrently (White et al. 2018, p.  3004). Causation and risk factors for developing these disorders are complex and multi-faceted (Barch 2013); together highly subjective and personal due to life experiences and acute stress from trauma (Garfin et al. 2018), and collective, encompassing familial factors such as inherited trauma, biology and genetics (Streit et al. 2014). Social and cultural factors such as economic disadvantage, access to medical care, and geographic location, are also contributing factors, and there are cultural variants on perceptions of mental illness that skew the seeking of treatment (Bignall et al. 2015). In addition, the connection to the microbiome—“100 trillion or so organisms that provide a barrier and a profound effect on our immune regulatory function, most notably in the large intestine” (Deans 2017, p. 1)—is increasingly important to understanding mental illness, through the ‘gut-brain’ axis (Deans 2017; Foster et al. 2017; Schmidt 2015), along with the impact of chronic low-grade inflammation (Eswarappa et al. 2019; Langgartner et al. 2019) and diet (Lassale et al. 2018; Sandhu et al. 2017). Globally, there are additional trends on the macro level that pose economic, significant challenges to mental health (Patel et al. 2018). Despite these disorders often being treated at an individual level, environmental factors are significant. Firstly, while there can also be (different) psychological disadvantages of living in rural areas (Watkins and Jacoby 2007), the sensory stressors associated with ‘urbanicity’—a term used in psychiatry referring to the urban environment (Söderström et al. 2016, p. 104)—are noted risk factors for mental illness (Streit et al. 2014). Research shows that living in a city increases the chance of anxiety by 20%, and depression by almost 40% (Peen et  al. 2010), and of  developing schizophrenia in vulnerable individuals (Akdeniz et  al. 2014; Haddad et al. 2015). Specifically, multiple stressors associated with living in urban

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environments, such as traffic noise (Payne 2013), are shown to increase activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain corresponding to perception of threat (Lederbogen et  al. 2011). This in turn has implications for behaviors such as avoidance of city centers, as demonstrated in Söderström’s excellent studies into lived experiences post-psychosis (2019). Urgent attention to the impact of accumulated environmental toxic exposures on poor neurological and mental health is increasingly called for (Cabrera et  al. 2016; Chen and Nakagawa 2018). Air pollution is now considered a significant risk factor for neurocognitive function (Power et al. 2015; Pun et al. 2019; Ranft et al. 2009; Tzivian et al. 2017, 2015), development of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Markevych et al. 2018), and poor mental health including psychological distress (Sass et al. 2017), psychosis (Attademo et al. 2017), depression (Wang et al. 2019; Zhang et al. 2017), anxiety (Power et al. 2015) or both (Pun et al. 2017) and impacts on subjective wellbeing (Yuan et al. 2018). Furthermore, living in an area of urban socio-economic disadvantage has a profound effect on the incidence of both acute and chronic mental health disorders (Enticott et al. 2016; Rudolph et al. 2013), especially for those with the lowest amounts of greenspace (Engemann et  al. 2019; Logan 2015). Environmental degradation and climate change create thoroughly more precarious positions, both in communities exposed to its immediate and worst effects (Cunsolo Willox et al. 2012; Lejano 2019; Obradovich et al. 2018; Petrasek MacDonald et al. 2015; Whitfield et al. 2019), and increased incidences of natural disasters leading to depression (Wilson-­ Genderson et  al. 2018). Increasing heat in cities—both overall and through severe weather events—is a cause of death each year, predominantly with the most vulnerable (Arbuthnott and Hajat 2017). Heat also impacts negatively on wellbeing (Noelke et  al. 2016; Peng et  al. 2017; Thompson et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2014; Panno et al. 2017). Clayton and colleagues (2017b) have noted four main ways in which recurring and progressive impacts of environmental change can express itself: the trauma of an extreme weather event both immediate (shock) and through Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD); the loss of place, identity, and control by distress regarding slow but permanent changes to location over time, such as through drought or flooding; chronic stress on relationships, health, and mental health leading to secondary problems such as substance abuse; and feelings of helplessness and despair. Australia has increasingly been an example of how these play out (Kingsley and Thomas 2017);

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Speldewinde et al. (2009) found that environmental degradation (in this case dryland salinity in rural areas) was positively correlated with hospitalization for major depression; compounded especially where people’s livelihoods are enmeshed with the land. However, this distress can be felt by anyone, even without such direct economic ties. Australian philosopher Albrecht (2005; Albrecht et  al. 2007) calls it ‘solastalgia’: “the pain or sadness caused by the loss or lack of solace and sense of isolation due to the present state of one’s home and territory”. Others have referred to ‘ecological grief’ (Cunsolo and Ellis 2018). Such concepts and emotional distress are not new to those traditionally dispossessed of land and country, such as Indigenous Australians, “deeply connected to ‘country,’ the place with which they have spiritual ties and to which they have traditional material rights” (Bowles 2015, p. 428). Therefore, urban sensory stressors and environmental exposures such as pollution combine with ecological degradation to create a multi-faceted environmental impact on mental health, rendering an individualistic perspective on treatment and healing somewhat inadequate. However, we also know these effects to be relational; not everyone who lives in a city develops a mental illness, and does not experience its elements in the same way, for “[c]ity users are not exposed to ‘the city’ or ‘density’ as one is exposed to the sun” (Söderström et  al. 2016, p.  109). Therefore, a nuanced and flexible approach to addressing poor mental health in our cities is called for.

1.3   Nature, Place, and Mental Health There is a rich intellectual history contesting the many ways in which the terms ‘nature’ and ‘culture’—as with ‘mind’ and ‘body’—have been used to reinforce bounded, oppositional, and essentialist categories, privileging rationality, containment, and control (mind/culture) over those considered unruly, irrational, and primal (body/nature). Within the category of ‘nature’ there are further hierarchies of animals and vegetation, seen in promotion of some species as worthy of protection, and others considered fearfully and negatively (Knight 2008) or as ‘trash animals’ (Nagy and Johnson 2013). In contemporary planning and design there has also been the persistent and well-noted problems with the interchangeable use of terms such as ‘nature’ and ‘greenspace’—common in studies outside of ecology and environmental science (Taylor and Hochuli 2017). Here then Maller et al.’s definition of nature (2005) is useful: “an organic environ-

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ment where the majority of ecosystem processes are present … This includes the spectrum of habitats from wilderness areas to farms and gardens” (p. 46). However, Maller’s further explanations of a more nuanced, inherent and intermingled existence of urban nature is more aligned to the kind of propositions this book puts forward. She aptly states, Although not always visible or noticed, vibrant non-humans are very much part of cities and similarly urbanised settings—in the water that flows through drains and pipes; in rock and other ancient substrates under asphalt and concrete—furthermore, insects, animals, birds, trees and other types of vegetation persist, and innumerable microbes are found everywhere. (Maller 2018, p. 153) (Fig. 1.2)

Public health and urban planning share an enduring cultural and historical connection, for example utilizing the benefits of fresh air and sunlight in developing design concepts such as Ebenzeer Howard’s Garden Cities and Modernist ‘streets  in the sky’. Furthermore, primacy of ‘nature’ as an organizing principle of urban design has long been established (Paquot 2016); indeed, whole sub-disciplines are devoted to it, such as Landscape Urbanism (Waldheim 2006, 2016) and Ecological Urbanism (Gandy 2015; Mostafavi and Doherty 2010). There are two ways in which this connection between health and urban planning has evolved. Firstly, with many transmissible diseases becoming epidemiologically controlled last century through vaccination, education, and medication, attention has turned to the exponential increase of physical ‘lifestyle’ diseases: non-­ contagious, often progressive illnesses that have a significant lifestyle element to their development, such as diet or exercise, and for whom proximity to ‘greenspace’ has proven to be  beneficial (Astell-Burt et  al. 2014). These diseases are perceived as being highly preventable and sensitive to modification in environment and behavior, despite having significant sociocultural, economic, and regional factors. For instance, a processed diet might be related to income and lack of access to affordable fruit and vegetables rather than convenience (Lang and Rayner 2012). Indeed, there are many examples of calls and methods for creating ‘healthy cities’,  which can also overlook the multiplicity of factors informing or precluding ‘choice’ (Ezzati et al. 2018; Paine and Thompson 2017). For design of urban spaces this has meant a directed effort on  how healthy behaviors can be encouraged through urban spatial organization and composition. One of the most significant of these is the drive to

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Fig. 1.2  Urban orchard, Perth, Australia

increase physical activity, which has been  shown to have a role in many positive health outcomes. Encouraging exercise (or at least, reducing sedentary  behavior) (Henson et  al. 2016) lends itself to logical planning interventions: adding bike and walking paths; ‘fitness zones’ in parks; and attention and resources on creating or upgrading recreation spaces, although there are mixed findings as to the efficacy of these interventions

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(Hunter et al. 2015; Roberts et al. 2016; Wilkie et al. 2019). Secondly, from an environmental perspective there is also much literature on how nature—especially in the vernacular of green and blue infrastructures that focus on multifunctional environmental sustainability—can temper the worst effects of climate change and urbanization, and in turn assist general health outcomes. These include the impact of water, tree canopies, and large greenspaces in cooling cities (Bowler et al. 2010; Gago et al. 2013; Gunawardena et  al. 2017) and the mitigation of air pollution (Nowak et al. 2018). Complexity of vegetation composition and structure seems particularly important in mitigating air pollution and urban heat (Vieira et al. 2018) as do specific features of specific plants—through leaf texture and size, for instance (Baraldi et al. 2019). However, mental illnesses, with their complex causal pathways, do not immediately lend themselves so obviously to specific behavioral and spatial interventions. While attention has been paid to nature in the  design of hospitals, rehabilitation centers and other care facilities (Abdelaal and Soebarto 2019; Paraskevopoulou and Kamperi 2018; Ziegler 2015) as well as established nature-based therapies and programs (Moeller et  al. 2018; O’Brien 2018; Sonntag-Öström et al. 2015), a gap has emerged in how to foster mental health enhancing nature connections in public space. Currently, much focus on individual mental wellbeing in public health is often couched as a by-product of increased physical activity and/or increased social interaction (both proven mechanisms, and highly effective). However, there are now robust research findings now on the benefits that nature can have on mental health. Particularly from the 1990s and early 2000s, disciplines such as environmental psychology have had a significant impact, seeking to quantify the psychological benefits of nature, examining categories of ‘nature’ versus ‘urban’ (Hartig et  al. 1991; Herzog et al. 2003; Staats et al. 2003; Ulrich et al. 1991) through lab/ image-based preferences and field experiments. These studies explored and mostly found connections between nature and mental health and/or wellbeing, with benefits of nature often referred to as ‘restoration’: the  “renewal or recovery of resources or capacities that have become depleted in meeting the demands of everyday life” (Hartig 2007, p. 164). These studies have become increasingly specific and nuanced, yielding an extensive evidence base. The wealth of data has also filtered through to mainstream public health. While well-intentioned and generally positive, the suggestion that those suffering from mental health issues spend time in nature can be

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vague or complicated by contextual factors. Indeed, the desire to find a ‘dose-response’ amount of nature—a ‘nature pill’—or provide a ‘green/ nature prescription’ (a nature-based health intervention)—is increasingly part of this drive for specificity (Hunter et al. 2019; Robinson and Breed 2019). In practice, these programs are still perceived as quite novel (Carrell 2018; Dockrill 2018; Melamed 2017; Richards 2017; Seltenrich 2015), and with mixed findings (Beiki et al. 2018). There are numerous issues that complicate the accessibility and equity of promoting nature for wellbeing, that are often overlooked in the planning and design of public spaces. These might include practical barriers: despite living within a ‘walkable catchment’ (common terminology for a specific radius around an area), access could be limited by a busy intersection or an isolated underpass. It might mean moving with a pram (Jensen 2017), or a wheelchair, that is rarely accounted for past a park’s (paved) edges, or not considering vulnerability of mobility, as studies have found with older adults (Jorgensen and Anthopoulou 2007). Sensory processing issues (Miller et al. 2009), fears for safety, or feeling unwelcome in the space—such as a  lack of multi-language signage, or overt ethno-racial discrimination (Byrne 2012) can all impact on choices about visiting areas of nature that hinder a ‘simple’ non-medicalized approach. Green spaces in cities can be ‘havens’ but also “afford refuge to drug-takers, drinking, and accommodating other ‘unsanctioned’ activities” (Adams et  al. 2015, p.  208). Financial disadvantage and rising costs of living, leading to increasing hours of work (or multiple jobs), may eradicate any ‘free time’ in which to visit such spaces (Prescott & Logan 2018, p. 15). In addition, the common co-occurrence of mental and physical ill-health and/or an impairment, such as between anxiety, depression, and chronic pain (Csupak et al. 2018) signals the complexity in which all facets of health are bound up with these ‘mundane’ actions. It also precludes the fact that many people who are struggling with any level of mental distress may lack motivation and energy to go anywhere at all. It would be unhelpful, therefore, to explore mental health and urban design purely from the standpoint of ‘making space greener’, the assumption of which is that any nature interaction will be soothing or will ‘make us happy’. Positive emotions may not always be the result (or goal); instead an experience in nature may enable a space in which a different connection with the world occurs, allowing reflection on our lives, our place in the world, or  release of emotions such as sadness, grief, and love (Pearce 2018). Secondly, the relationship between health and place is complex,

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and can be viewed as health enabling (Duff 2011), not inherently healing. Health in place is “a relational outcome, as something that emerges through a complex set of transactions between a person and their broader socio-environmental setting” (Conradson 2005, p. 338). Here I draw on extensive and diverse research in disciplines such as human geographies to consider the embodied lived experience and relational temporal and contextual co-creation (Hall and Wilton 2017) of these interactions between nature, place and mental health and wellbeing. These concepts ground design and invite a more flexible understanding of nature experiences. For instance, one study found that for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder there was a relationship with increased anxiety not only in areas with large amounts of ‘grey space’ but also in areas with an increased tree canopy (Larson et al. 2018). We therefore need to query the benign uniformity of ‘greenspace’, as well as its benefits, and “give further empirical attention to the sheer diversity of embodied experiences” (Hall and Wilton 2017, p.  740), as Bell et  al. (2019) state, “there are complex sociomaterial-­ affective dynamics that shape people’s opportunities for such transformations; dynamics that will not be addressed by naively prescribing a dose of 20 minutes of sea swimming a day in the name of health” (p. 6). If places aren’t inherently healing then fostering a connection between urban nature and mental health requires more nuance to create  open-­ ended opportunities for engagement. Here, a focus on the multisensory experiences of nature—ones that involve whole-body perception of environments—is crucial. ‘Sensory’ relates to the full gamut of perceptions relating to the mind-body, which Harrison et  al. (2019) state as falling into four categories: somatic sensations—including the feeling of objects, sensations on the skin, pain, temperature, and proprioception (our sense of ourselves in space); smell and taste; vision; and audition. Attention to all of these in relation to the beneficial interplay between nature and human health is crucial in thinking about how they might inform a spatial outcome. In doing so, we also loosen the grip that the visual has on urban design, acknowledging and engaging with the multisensory atmosphere and how that is mediated (Degen and Rose 2012) and avoiding creating new normative behaviors around public space and a specific type of wellbeing; “adding yet more judgements, codes and orders” (Andrews and Duff 2019, p. 139). Finally, the assumption that mental health design is only relevant to those suffering from psychological distress is fundamentally flawed. As a global equity issue mental health and wellbeing is central to all lives, espe-

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cially as health is not static in place or time, nor is it fixed to certain people only (Patel et al. 2018) which ignores the temporality of symptoms, experiences, and management over days or life. Certainly reframing mental illnesses such as depression as ‘disabilities’ does much to disrupt the limited stereotypes of disabilities as physical impairments, and gives appropriate weight to the detrimental effects that mental disturbances have on the daily lives of those suffering, as the ‘invisibility’ of mental illness means that it can be stigmatized or untreated (Vidourek and Burbage 2019). This temporality of mental health is particularly challenging to disciplines where a standardized series of indicators or guidelines are often touted as ways to ensure particular designs are implemented.

1.4   Rethinking Our Urban Ecology Where do we start, then, in creating more opportunities to engage with nature in urban spaces to support mental health and wellbeing? Significant to this project is considering design that provides opportunities to enhance mental health—making this engagement with nature an interaction, rather than transactional (nature ‘provides’ us  something)—and  concurrently fosters the ecological health of cities, highlighting the interrelationship of urban ecology and design (Niemelä 2014). Indeed, there has been an increasing commitment across disciplines to address the inextricable connections between public health and biodiversity, building on previous models of socio-ecological health and ecological public health (Lang and Rayner 2012) with emphasis on  the co-benefits and mechanisms that make this relationship interreliant (Clark et al. 2014; Sandifer et al. 2015). This commitment has emerged most recently under the banner of ‘planetary health’ (Tait 2018) which  grapples with the vast and interrelated challenges posed by ecological and human health, in some instances positing a ‘clinical ecology’ (Nelson et al. 2019). Getting specific about the ecological composition and health of what ‘nature’ we are discussing is crucial in understanding that, in addition to the logistical and other barriers preventing (or discouraging) people from spending time in nature, there is the other issue of what people might find if they actually get there. Despite cities focusing on increasing ‘greenspaces’, what counts as ‘nature’, for a large number of people on their daily commutes and routines, is often uninspired, neglected, and repetitive. Sporting fields often are substitutes for natural environments, regardless of their mono-functionality, and irregular use. Similarly, low maintenance

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local parks—often characterized by turf with scattered trees and few amenities—can often be empty and uninviting as spaces to relax, linger, and restore. Biodiversity—diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems (United Nations 1992)—is central to these connections between mental and ecological health in (at least) two key ways. The first is that many of the most beneficial evocations of ‘nature’ come when there is evidence (or perception) of biodiverse conditions (as will become apparent in the pages that follow). The appreciation of the multisensory environment that diverse plants and animals offer—specifically signified through the bird and insect sounds, color, shape, and textural difference, and elements of the unexpected—evokes dynamic engagement that invites us to merge with space in more porous, connected state. Such a proposition takes inspiration from Marris’ (2011) concept of a ‘rambunctious garden’, and finds expression in ideas of ‘urban rewilding’ to “encourage biodiversity, ecosystem function, and the persistence of native species in a range of urban settings” (Maller et al. 2019, p. 166). Secondly, there is growing and conclusive evidence that microbiomes—“communities of microorganisms in a given environment (e.g. urban greenspaces, humans)” (Mills et al. 2017, p. 868)—are a pathway to improve human immunological, and ecological, health (Flies et  al. 2017; Mills et  al. 2017). Specifically, microbiota are present in the air we breathe, filled with “bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi, spores, pollen, plant biomass and dust” (Bloomfield et al. 2016, p. 216), soil on our skin (Gronroos et al. 2019), and are the result of a diverse composition of plant and animal life (Prescott et al. 2016; Rook 2013). Decreased diversity in environmental and human microbiomes has a detrimental impact on the human immune system, manifesting in increased incidence of health issues such as allergies (Hanski et al. 2012; Renz et al. 2017), and are increasingly implicated in mental health disorders. As with environmental toxins that we inhale, absorb through our skin, or consume through our food or drink (Alaimo 2016), beneficial microbiota are a way in which the natural environment merges with our material self. Therefore, in addition to how fostering healthier urban ecologies creates environmental benefits there are direct pathways that highlight how contact with nature enhances neurological health and  function. Biodiversity in urban areas is key (Flies et  al. 2017) and microbiome rewilding has been proposed as a way of addressing these vast challenges (Mills et al. 2017, 2019).

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It is clear, then, that traditional ‘greenspace’ in the form of ‘the park’, or ‘POS’/Public Open Space, is not enough, and nor is reliance on the park as a metric of healthy living, one that does the heavy lifting with regard to meeting the needs of ecological health and human wellbeing. Attention to the novel pockets of land that have hitherto been ignored as ‘unproductive’ or leftover, without formal function, has illustrated a mutually beneficial resource for both human health and urban biodiversity (Pincetl and Gearin 2013). With regard to land use I then emphasize the ‘awkward’ (Jones 2007), ‘in-between’ (Rupprecht and Byrne 2014), sometimes ‘unintentional’ (Gandy 2016) spaces of our urban environment to maximize this inter-species interaction in a manner that would benefit the human mind and body, and plants, wildlife, and all elements of the environment (Sandifer et al. 2015) (Fig. 1.3). These everyday opportunities for multisensory, incidental interactions could also reverse the ‘extinction of experience’ (Clayton et al. 2017a; Soga and Gaston 2018) as “people who directly experience nature regularly in any given week are clearly the exception rather than the norm” (Cox et al. 2017, p. 81). It is important here to acknowledge that increasing nature is not unambiguously restorative or health-inducing in all its forms or for all people (Lyytimäki et al. 2008) and that the increasing amount of ‘borderlands’—

Fig. 1.3  Street planter, Berlin, Germany

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“stubborn, ambiguous human-animal zones” (Yeo and Neo 2010, p. 697)—as urban growth impinges further into previously rural areas can challenge even the most ‘nature-loving’ human, such as the conflicts between monkeys and humans in Singapore (Yeo and Neo 2010). Changing weather patterns and climate can intensify pollen allergies, and increased mosquitoes bring risk of disease such as Dengue Fever, malaria and other zoonotic  diseases (Parker 2019). Acknowledging these negatives highlights the messy and complex ways in which urban and nature intermingle and how we might co-exist; the porous boundaries that render any arbitrary planning of zones merely perfunctory. It also becomes, as Mills et al. (2019) state, a trade off, as to whether the risks of maintaining the status quo outweigh the risks of change.

1.5   Neuroscience and Design The term neuroscience has regrettably become, in casual parlance, shorthand for brain imaging (Beaulieu 2002; Littlefield and Johnson 2012); colorful pictures of brain activity that can be a seductive way of discussing science and human interaction; a way of ‘reading the brain’ or more critically perceived as a reductionist and deterministic way of finding a neural cause for all of human activity. However, in reality neuroscience has, of course, far larger, more dynamic scope and methodologies, encompassing multiple disciplines, tools, theories, and scales relating to the brain and nervous system. Indeed, as Fitzgerald et al. (2014) explain, “the contemporary neurosciences are already made up of a host of (sometimes competing) disciplines and perspectives; there is a kind of multidisciplinary cosmopolitanism inherent to the formation of the ‘new brain sciences’” (p. 712). In his excellent article about the ongoing changes of our ‘cultural’ brains, Papadopoulos (2011) uses the term ‘brain-body’ to describe how From the perspective of embodiment there is no such thing as the brain as a fully separate organ … the brain not as such but as part of, as embedded in, as being in relation to other functions and systems of the body. (p.  440) (italics in original)

As a method of enhancing understanding of how place has an effect on people’s emotions, cognition, and health, the adoption of neuro-language and experimentation has been appealing to the built form and design pro-

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fessions (Goldhagen 2017; Sussman and Hollander 2014). Recent applications have sought to explore the effects of city and natural elements on the mind/ways in which human mind-bodies interact with their temporal, sensory, and material environments (Ellard 2015; Montgomery 2013). A significant proportion of this research had previously been confined to a lab, but taking the technology outside and in situ (in many cases literally on the move) has vastly increased the amount of data able to be absorbed about people’s proclivities, not only to do with health impacts, but also to do with attention, wayfinding, use of public spaces, transport routes, and advertising. Smart phones already track much of our movement through a Global Positioning System (GPS); neuroscience works with or alongside such technologies as ‘wearables’ have transformed the discipline (Aspinall et  al. 2015; Littlefield 2018; Roe et  al. 2013). Neuroscience has held promise to those trying to make these connections more empirical and specific, to see those cities as intertwined zones of arousal and meditation, even to map the city in the brain, as the urban citizen winds her way—here, noisily frustrated; there, calmly restored—through its different spaces. (Fitzgerald et al. 2016, p. 229)

The link between neuroscience and architecture (Eberhard 2008, 2009) was solidified in 2003 with the creation of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA) in San Diego, with its first international conference held in 2012 (Whitelaw 2013). Excitement about the remarkable and specific  insights neuroscience can offer our understandings of how and why environments affect us (though potentially overlooking how this interaction is reciprocal) is seductive; as writer Amelia Taylor-Hochberg (2016) argues that “Before neuroscience, architecture had only spoons— now, it has knives.” However, architecture is not urban design, despite its professional crossovers. Urban design is fundamentally a discipline in which city spaces are seen in holistic terms; all parts inextricable from each other, relational and in context, and including in its purview an appreciation and consideration of the ‘non’ spaces, thresholds, and transitions, that connect built form to open space, streets to dwellings, neighborhoods to city (Carmona 2018; Dovey and Wood 2014), which includes natural elements. Its attention is on the experience of living in those places, and the integration of elements to make those lives better. While there is an array of different

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theories within the discipline arguing the best way to go about this, the impetus to make ‘the urban form’ not only the category of analysis but also the object of creative design is at the heart of the endeavor. While the connection of urban design and neuroscience is still somewhat new (Hollander and Foster 2016), it has found expression through numerous platforms, such as ideas of the ‘conscious city’, which has become a theme du jour, inviting fascinating and diverse discussions (Fitzgerald et  al. 2016), and giving impetus to new sub-disciplines interested in these ideas such as ‘neuro urbanism’ (Adli et al. 2017), ‘health neuroscience’ (Erickson et al. 2014), and ‘population neuroscience’ (Falk et al. 2013). However, there are tensions inherent in forging connections between such (seemingly) disparate disciplines. There are four considerations with which we should proceed. The first is that a focus on the brain only, rather than the holistic brain-body, can reinforce the mind-body dualism and a certain neurological determinism (Pickersgill 2013). Indeed, to some the allure of brain imaging technologies is that it seemingly offers the promise of ‘pure’ objective data, setting up a seemingly dangerous precedent in its power to render biological processes transparent, without its very human experimental context or what Fitzgerald et  al. (2014) call “the traffic between …. bodies, feelings, theories, situations and laboratories” (p. 714). Secondly, neuroscience should unequivocally not be seen as a panacea for all the unknowables about how humans interact with their environments, just as nature should not be considered romantically as a universally beautifying or positive experience for humans. Third, attendance research into neural plasticity with regard to engagement with external environments is key in disrupting any enduring static understandings of ‘health’ and ‘place’. Finally, fast developing research regarding how environmental exposure— both detrimental, such as pollutants, and health enabling, such as microbes—is integral to both neurological and mental health, is expanding this field, reinforcing the brain-body system as far more than how humans perceive nature to one where we quite literally absorb it. To this end, this book supports the need for considered applicability, rather than wholesale adoption  of this research. We need design that is forgiving in its practice, as much as we need information to drive it. Neuroscience in this analysis is then viewed holistically: studies of the ways in which the environment and the nervous system interact and inform each other, that can encompass the qualitative, and multidisciplinary quantitative work in multiple fields, as most beneficial to an embodied and relational understanding and application of urban nature for mental health.

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1.6   Methodology and Aims In bringing these disciplinary strands together,  then, I adapt Keniger et al.’s (2013) categorizations of nature interactions being indirect, incidental and/or intentional to argue for urban nature that is informal, incidental and incremental (Fig. 1.4). Such an approach is advantageous in both  addressing inequities of access to nature, and avoiding large-scale landscape design that can create ‘green gentrification’ or the ‘park paradox’ (Wolch et al. 2014). Whether this is best achieved through inter-, multi-, or trans-­ disciplinarity (Annerstedt 2010) depends on which of the meanings of these methodologies are utilized, but for our purposes here I refer to Huutoniemi et al.’s reference (2010) to ‘theoretical interdisciplinarity’: research [that] synthesizes or contrasts concepts, models, or theories from more than one field in order to develop new theoretical tools for interdisciplinary analysis … to inhabit a new territory of knowledge, or establish a new paradigm of inquiry. (p. 84)

To this end I join, and add to, Parris et al. (2018) urging for those in the design and built environment professions to wholeheartedly support the

Fig. 1.4  Vacant lot, Melbourne, Australia

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efforts to make biodiversity a central tenet of city design, along with insightful advances in ‘Biodiversity Sensitive Urban Design’ (Garrard et al. 2018)—though with my scope broader to address human mental health as (one) specific outcome. The research and design principles presented here could go some way in addressing Gascon et al.’s (2018) prompts for future research in ‘personalized ecology’, especially in identifying and exploring the intricacies of ‘human-nature’ interactions. It also responds to Weber and Trojan’s (2018) calls, in their overview of restorative potential in urban settings, for practical and precise applications of how and what creates these effects, while avoiding the “earnestness and joylessness [that] seems to accompany much sustainability discourse” (Philippon 2012, p. 173; Alaimo 2016). Finally, I hope to ally myself with the new definitions of ‘clinical ecology’ in focusing efforts on practical applications of planetary health (Nelson et al. 2019). It is within, and building upon, this literature that this book joins this increasingly interdisciplinary and dynamic field; offering a contribution through a more sustained, and concise, focus on the mental health connections to urban design in a targeted exploration of nature. This book draws on, and forges connections between, research from a wide range of disciplines in health, ecological, environmental and climate science, human geography, cultural studies, and design and planning and design disciplines. Specifically, this task involved the analysis of over 2000 peer-reviewed academic sources, as well as secondary media and popular science texts, to find connections that could tangibly translate to spatial practices in the city. The aim of this book, then, is twofold: first, to explore the significant and promising disciplinary overlaps in a way that befits the significance of this project; and secondly, to find ways into that research that de-silos its impact and applies its findings to the design of urban streets, neighborhoods, and centers. It is hoped that this multi-faceted approach optimizes an understanding of how these fields could reliably inform each other, encouraging more confident forays outside of our disciplines, and more inclusive and optimistic sharing of knowledge and ­possibilities that would have multiple beneficial effects. This can address the reality that issues such as ecological health are ‘adisciplinary’ and “will not be solved by linear research which otherwise remains in silos” (Logan et al. 2018, p. 7). It embraces the possibilities available at a local level that can have global impact. This book is also strongly guided by a focus on equitable and genuine access to nature, informed by research on everyday, lived experiences of place, rather than abstract or functional design. To

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this end, the movements and perceptions of those most vulnerable in our communities offer an invaluable perspective on designing that is truly inclusive of diversities, rather than trying to quantify difference in static forms. The parameters of the book’s scope should be noted. Much of what I write about is in relation to first world, Western cities. This is both due to it being my own frame of reference (and my limitation to English texts) but equally because the vast majority of studies in these fields are from Australia, Europe, and North America. There are also notable emphases from Asia, such as Japan, Korea, and China, especially with regard to forest and neurological studies. It is clear that developing countries may have different challenges in this area. I also particularly acknowledge that my own intellectual, cultural and ecological perspective is shaped by my upbringing in Australia. Secondly, this book focuses on the kinds of mood disorders that are common and often chronic: predominantly depression and anxiety. The choice for this focus is twofold: first, again the majority of literature concentrates on these disorders specifically, or on symptoms (such as rumination) that are characteristic of one or both of them. Diseases associated with neurological degeneration, such as dementia, have also been prevalent in the literature, but largely in relation to in-­ house care facilities; a subject that is quite different from that of public open space. Finally, my explicit focus on everyday embodiment relies on the excellent studies regarding how different individuals perceive and engage with different forms of nature, urban nature, and space in general. University experimental studies can sometimes end up with a limited range of participants (such as all psychology students, or all male) and may not always reflect social or cultural differences. Therefore, considerations such as safety, access, and usage are all to be viewed through the lens of those who may be and/or feel more or most vulnerable in public spaces. Calling attention to the taken-for-granted temporalities of everyday life and ­routines (the ‘mundane’) and spaces (the ‘informal’) can be effective starting places to explore this interplay of nature and mental health.

1.7   Conclusion This book presents a sustained exploration of current exhortations of ‘nature for mental health’ and its implications for a more nuanced and embodied approach to urban design, by forging connections between

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three key positions: exploring mental health as an embodied experience that illuminates the interconnection of nature and human; the importance of making diversity of experience, embodiment, and access central to considerations of nature interactions; and the imperative of adaptive urban ecologies as the ‘nature’ which humans living in cities should embrace. This de-silos mental health from its current position separate to design, and engages with the synergies between biodiversity and wellbeing in urban areas. Here there is  an incredible opportunity to  more directly mine, translat, and apply the aforementioned vast scientific data already available on these beneficial impacts on mental health. Notwithstanding the deep divergences in vernacular between (and sometimes within) disciplines, the geographical and climatic contextual differences, the multitude of variables that make drawing generalizable conclusions from this interdisciplinary research (seem) almost impossible, utilizing these dynamic data sets seems imperative. Therefore, the restoration of mental health and wellbeing as an end goal of planning and design should recognize these complexities. Almost 15  years ago landscape researchers Kevin Thwaites and colleagues drew on Richard Foreman’s ‘patch-corridor-matrix’ model of ecology to propose that, We have, then, an emergent spatial structure of restorative urban open space, which moves away from the idea of large discrete open areas that people purposefully go to in order to seek respite and rejuvenation, to more of a web or mesh-like structure that links together a system of smaller spaces, woven into the fabric of cities in a more holistic way. Each space, and the links between them, may be designed in such a way as to encourage restorative experiences. (Thwaites et al. 2005, p. 543)

The health of our cities, and our health within our cities, is one of our most significant global future challenges. It is my hope that this text contributes to the seeking of creative solutions.

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CHAPTER 2

Reimagining an Urban Nature

Abstract  This chapter explores the current epidemiological and population-­level studies on the benefits of nature with regard to distance, proportion, and time spent. It highlights some of the existing issues with ideas of ‘greenspace’, both as a definition and as a typology for maximizing ecological and mental health outcomes, as well as addressing how romantic ideas of ‘unfettered’ or uninhabited wilderness are exclusionary. The concept of wild urban natures is then explored as a way to enhance spatial, ecological, and health outcomes. Keywords  Nature • Urban ecology • Wild • Greenspace • Mental health

2.1   Introduction In a recent interview landscape architect Teresa Gali-Izard stated that: My goal is to find a new kind of built environment and an aesthetic that is able to include the logic of living systems. I am obsessed with erasing the line. With breaking the line. With making everything continuous. The way that living systems work is not through [clear] lines but through a continuous transition. I am trying to break the traditional way that people see nature in cities. (Mouritz 2018)

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To what extent can designers retheorize nature in the city—to reconsider its ‘continuous transition’? In this chapter I present the strong epidemiological evidence for relationships between ‘greenspace’ proximity, proportion, and visitation, and beneficial mental health. The population scale of most of these studies, using landscape measurements such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)  alongside health data, means that findings are within particular buffers, such as 300 meters or 1 kilometer from a reference point. As these studies are not designed to capture the specifics of lived experiences with nature (Gascon et al. 2015; Helbich 2019; Klompmaker et al. 2018; Nicole 2018; Wheeler et al. 2015), this prompts questions about the type of nature, locations, routines, and engagement that is occurring within these spaces, and the need to complement these findings with those of the diverse, mobile, micro, and incremental scale. Further, in most urban contexts ‘nature’ is referred to as ‘greenspace’, often used interchangeably in the literature as ‘green’, ‘park’, ‘public’, and ‘open space’ (Boulton et al. 2018, p. 88). ‘Greenspace’ is a symptom of an enduring distinction between ‘urban’ and ‘nature’ in zoning cities. Many of these terms refer to places with large amounts of lawn (Bolleter and Ramalho 2014); a socio-ecological phenomenon (Ignatieva et al. 2015) covering up to 75% of all urban greenspaces globally. Lawn is resource greedy and— with the use of common pesticides—harmful to human health, particularly children for whom parks, yards, and indoor floors are often the places of play (Robbins and Sharp 2006). Greenspace in this common form is considered ecologically inadequate (Bonthoux et  al. 2019a; Jorgensen and Gobster 2010), and while there is some concern that restoration of ecological health runs counter to needs of humans (whether social, health, economic), not only can there be a mutual co-existence of environments that are good for ecology and humans (Clayton et al. 2017), but that it is actually a scenario that will serve both best. Here, the growing appreciation of the liminal ‘wild urban natures’ can offer a framework for reimagining land use, ecology, and nature experiences in a more equitable, accessible way (Fig. 2.1).

2.2   How Close? Living close to greenspace has been shown to be immensely beneficial to mental health and wellbeing (Alcock et al. 2014; Wheeler et al. 2012; White et al. 2013). It has been found to enhance child neurodevelopment (Dadvand et  al. 2018), lessen behavioral issues, anxiety, and depression in children and teenagers (Bezold et al. 2018; Madzia et al.

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Fig. 2.1  Laneway, Melbourne, Australia

2018), and reduce anxiety in older adults (Kühn et al. 2017). The relationship between physical activity, greenspace, and mental health has been highlighted in numerous studies (Akpinar 2016; Astell-Burt et al. 2013; Dzhambov et al. 2018a, b) and has been touted as a likely mechanism in how proximity is of benefit. For example, Bauman et al.’s oftcited ‘coastal effect’ found that those who lived in a postcode adjacent

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to an Australian coast engaged with vigorous exercise 38% more than those who lived inland (1999). However, this association is not always apparent; people may visit greenspace but not engage in exercise (Veitch et al. 2015). Studies show that perception of distance has an effect on choice to walk, and there is a limit to how far people will—or can—walk to visit greenspace (Nielsen and Hansen 2007), which can be as little as 5  minutes (Völker et  al. 2018) or around 300 meters (Grahn and Stigsdotter 2003). The equation between proximity and usage is problematic, based on the “assumption that where people have nearby greenspaces, they will use them” (Bell et al. 2014, p. 287). Certain features of a park or traditional greenspace, including its existence as a discrete entity, away from public life, can mediate use, the outcomes of which can be particularly gendered (Richardson and Mitchell 2010). For example, a park that is sunny and well-occupied in the morning may be empty and unobserved in the early evening coming home from work. While paths where you cannot see around every corner may feel most interesting (and shorter) in some contexts (D’Acci 2019), in an isolated park they can pose a threat, whether from other humans or animals (Gatersleben and Andrews 2013; Jorgensen et al. 2012). Furthermore, the relationship between who visits, and who benefits, from natural environments (Beyer et al. 2014; Ward Thompson and Aspinall 2011) is often mediated by ‘self-removal’ from otherwise ‘accessible’ spaces due to social factors like feelings of cultural and ethnic exclusion (Byrne 2012; Seaman et al. 2010). Perception of formal greenspaces, such as playgrounds and parks, is also a factor in consideration of outdoor play and activity by children and adolescents. Studies in Milwaukee and Bristol have revealed that older children (between ages 10 and 12) avoid parks even when distance is not a factor, choosing instead informal green and non-greenspaces near home, such as streets, footpaths, alleys, and vacant lots—which were available, accessible, and felt safer (Platt 2012)—and spaces such as golf courses (Lachowycz et  al. 2012). For children in Texas, natural environments were associated with fear and discomfort, creating a preference (in outdoor settings) for parks with clear paths and streets (Bixler and Floyd 1997). Safety fears associated with certain features of traditional public open space  also influence adolescent perception and use of parks (Van Hecke et al. 2018). Furthermore, while diversity of weather conditions has been found in some cases to have no detrimental effect on the restorative engagement

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with nature (Brooks et al. 2017), in other studies its significant fluctuations and unpredictability have an impact on choice to go outside or how it is negotiated (Allen-Collinson 2017; Bell et  al. 2019) highlighting a major dissonance in the prioritizing of proximity. This impact has been explored with older adults (Orr et  al. 2016), particularly in relation to weather that is considered ambivalently due to potential risks, such as ‘white’ space (snow) in Minnesota (Finlay 2018), and with positive results of autumn leaves (orange hues) for schoolchildren in Canada (Paddle and Gilliland 2016). Heat and humidity might be responsible for the lack of connection between the abundant greenspace and wellbeing in Singapore (Saw et al. 2015). Therefore, a consideration of the ways in which visiting a park (for example), even if close to home, is mediated by the feeling of being safe, able to navigate daily or hourly changes in the elements, and whether the spaces feel available.

2.3   How Much? Another correlation consistently reported is that the proportion of nature near your residence is a factor in decreasing  the likelihood of suffering from depression or other mental health disorders (Cox et  al. 2017b; Gidlow et al. 2016b; Maas et al. 2009; Richardson et al. 2013; Song et al. 2019; van den Berg et al. 2010). In one study, a greenspace proportion of 21–40% was found to be most beneficial for children 4–13 years old (Feng and Astell-Burt 2017). Taylor et al. (2015) found a connection between the density of street trees and lower antidepressant prescription rates, with mental health treatment, such as visiting a specialist or getting a prescription for medication, being a proxy for measurement (Nutsford et al. 2013; Triguero-Mas et al. 2015). The amount of nature has also been shown to potentially have a ‘buffer’ effect for mental health of those from economically and/or socially deprived areas; which is crucial as these often have an inequitable distribution of greenspace (Astell-Burt et  al. 2014; Nesbitt et  al. 2019; Rigolon et  al. 2018; Roe et  al. 2013; Ward Thompson et al. 2014). However, quantity of greenspace is not a sign of its quality, and studies have shown that there are also connections between greenspace and reduced health in poorer areas (Amano et al. 2018; Sugiyama et al. 2016; Mitchell and Popham 2007); indicative of the complexities of green space provision.

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2.4   How Often? The frequency of visits and time spent in nature is also significant, with various results being found for mental wellbeing, such as benefits found from being in nature at least once a week (White et al. 2017), or 5 hours a week in a garden (or visiting 4–5 times per week) best for mitigating depression in some cases, with 10 minutes a week being enough in some people (Cox et al. 2017a). A four-year Norwegian study of preschoolers found that at ages 5–6 especially the level of attention and hyperactivity was connected with outdoor hours (Ulset et  al. 2017). However, these effects are associated with visits to greenspace. Significantly briefer interactions have been recorded as having a positive effect, such as Lee et al.’s (2015) 40 second green micro-breaks at work or five minutes of ‘green exercise’ (Barton and Pretty 2010). These ‘micro restorative’ nature experiences unable to be captured by large-scale measuring technologies are potentially where the majority of nature interactions take place ­(Triguero-­Mas et  al. 2015); “the simplicity of contact with, and subsequent appreciation of, nature as part of daily life” (Church 2018, p. 894). For de Vries et al. (2013) the quality—more than the quantity—of any natural features on a street were related to positive mental health; this is relevant too in the quality of interaction (Root et al. 2017, p. 45). The significance of such findings is that immediacy of contact and engagement with nature can be via  accumulated exposure rather than incorporating specific activities into a routine; in other words, small amounts or durations of nature experience add up over time (Prior et al. 2018). By virtue of their scale, what many of these population studies have in common is that place of residence is proxy for the lived experience, presenting an opportunity to complement them with studies that follow the impact of changing daily environments on health as (most) people experience their everyday lives literally ‘on the move’. Time at workplaces, moving between locations running errands, or meandering through areas (Cox et al. 2018; Su et al. 2019) all skew the details; indeed even the ‘place you live’ is far broader than a residence, encompassing neighborhood and social dimensions (Plane and Klodawsky 2013). Furthermore, not only do we move— problematizing the ‘residence-nature access’ equation (Helbich 2018)—but nature itself is understood through our shifting perceptions (Ingold 2004). Bell et al. (2014) argue for a shift in perspective regarding usage, away from ‘proximity’, to how people are actually living, stating that

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a focus on people’s everyday lives and priorities, rather than the physical organisation of their parks is required to understand how and why different green spaces are able to infiltrate personal routines. (p. 291)

This relational understanding of space and place adds depth to these findings, as greenspaces vary (Fuller et  al. 2007) (Fig.  2.2). Field work using electroencephalograms (EEGs) is being used to complement these population scale studies, to focus on the fluidity of movement and experience throughout the day (Ward Thompson et al. 2012), combining biomarkers such as cortisol to strengthen findings. Unpacking these studies, and the way in which our interactions with nature are quantified on a large scale, leads us to consider their significance to wellbeing in real time (Gascon et  al. 2015). Doing so  forgoes the outdated categorizations of ‘the norm’ and ‘other’ in designing these spaces,  acknowledging the reality of  people as changeable over time—whether day, year, or lifetime (Bell et al. 2018a)—and considering

Fig. 2.2  Post-industrial site, Zurich, Switzerland

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natural open space accordingly. If ‘greenspace’ is inadequate as a term both ecologically and with regard to mental health, and as a description  around which to organize and foster meaningful interactions with nature, we must consider a more nuanced alternative; one that not only refers to the composition and structure of the space, but also its spatial opportunities as a land use in urban areas.

2.5   Urban Ecologies and the Problem of ‘Authenticity’ At a planetary scale, as many have argued, we have now entered the ‘Anthropocene’—a new era wherein human influence on the Earth’s ecosystems is now undeniable and enduring—even stating that “humans have become a geological force” (Hare 2015, p. 109). While the timing and degree of human involvement is contested (Fagan 2019) this concept adds to the urgency with which humans tackle climatic influences and their catastrophic effect on ecosystems around the globe. In local terms this means that rather than returning to a ‘previous’ nature, we need to turn to the existing urban ecology: mixed up, liminal, disruptive, and accepting of the adaptations that have already occurred to more adequately address these current and future challenges; and the ‘ecological anxiety disorder’ which this state can produce (Robbins and Moore 2013). The diffuseness of the nature/urban boundary is crucial in arguing for the importance of an adaptive urban ecology, one that disentangles problematic ideas of which nature is ‘more’ authentic (and ‘natural’) in particular contexts. The unhelpfulness of the nature-urban dichotomy finds expression in three ways. Firstly, it maintains a conceptual status quo, whereby ‘nature’ and ‘urban’ as falsely (and often visually) depicted as discrete, bounded categories that are in opposition (such as in comparative studies that use images of  ‘green’ lush forests versus ‘grey’ heavily trafficked roads). This divergence can occur in research, potentially clouding  to which  conditions participants are responding (Beute et  al. 2016; Gidlow et al. 2016a; Karmanov and Hamel 2008). Nature has also been evoked in discourses of the physical ‘untouched’ environment, where the endurance of the purity of nature ‘out there’, and the drive to preserve endemic habitats or aim for environmental and ecological health. Nature as separate from, and empty of, human life is highly problematic, especially with regard to Indigenous Australians, whose relationship

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with Country is one of inherently reciprocal care (Adams 2008); indeed, “Aboriginal people in Australia and elsewhere have rightly objected to a definition of wilderness that excludes human impacts because it necessarily excludes them and all the generations of their people who lived in country and took care of it” (Rose 2012, p. 9). Further, this exclusion of continuous care is amplified by a romantic narrative of nature connection that relies on a culturally specific (Western) idea of nostalgic, unfettered, unsupervised nature play, at a key time in life: childhood. These positive childhood experiences are associated with future environmental care and engagement (Hosaka et  al. 2018; Ratcliffe and Korpela 2016; Ward Thompson et al. 2008; Flowers et al. 2016; Beery and Wolf-Watz 2014; Howell et  al. 2011) and feelings of happiness (Cervinka et  al. 2012; Howell et  al. 2011) which has led to efforts to, in particular, consider nature interventions for children (Giusti et al. 2017). In reality, however, these experiences  can be “entangled, fraught, and messy” (Taylor and Pacini-Ketchabaw 2016, p.  132). Additionally, this narrative excludes those without such a childhood experience of nature; however, pro environmental stances have also been found to be fostered as an adult, through urban nature such as community gardens (Prévot et al. 2018) and participation in tree planting exercises (Whitburn et  al. 2019), as well as life changes such as having children (Lin et al. 2017; Bell et al. 2018b). Here, a shift to ‘urban nature’ as hybrid and entangled is more conceptually beneficial, as are the multiple histories, experiences and forms of care that inform an ongoing entanglement with nature (Fig. 2.3). Secondly, the urban–nature dichotomy maintains a planning status quo of zoning for ‘nature’ either as an entity of conservation that is separated and protected (Gill et al. 2009) or as a site of ‘recreation’: local ‘greenspace’, that fulfills the requirement of the planning need to have parks within walkable ‘catchments’. In both these cases these zones don’t ask about the embodied experiences that people have within those areas, if they even visit them at all. It is also based often upon the assumption that people need allocated mono-functional greenspaces for such activities, and sustains a disconnect between regulatory intention and actual experience and use (Ives et al. 2017). Instead, a refocus to incidental places throughout cities would be more equitable and utilize overlooked land in increasingly dense or developed areas. Finally, it maintains an ecological status quo that simultaneously focuses on remnant or endemic vegetation as a sign of environmental health,

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Fig. 2.3  Spontaneous vegetation, Split, Croatia

maintaining marker of ‘authenticity’ that relates to an unknown “historical reference point” (Gandy 2013, 2018). This idea that the ‘nature’ we need to recreate is one that existed a priori human intervention is flawed in that it can lead to ad hoc integration or improvements of nature rather than reconceptualizing urban nature as something adaptive, creative, and organic. However, a valuing of non-traditional greenspace and habitat

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protection may multiply the effects of Forman’s (1995) ‘patch-corridor-­ matrix’ concept (Newman et al. 2017). The dissolving of these false binaries would therefore accept urban ecology as already in existence and focus on it being worthy of value. The idea of urban ecology is different  from ‘the urban’ as ecology (Pickett et  al. 2017) or nature as something (incorrectly) pure or ‘Eden-esque’ (Nassauer and Raskin 2014), in that attention is put on the peculiarities and particularities of ecology that have flourished, resisted, and adapted despite the relentlessness of development, and in the face of land clearing. This urban ecology also disrupts ideas of contested authenticity, for instance in Australia in debates around ‘native’ versus ‘exotic’ flora in park and garden settings (Head and Muir 2006; Trigger and Head 2010), especially as a rallying cry for environmental conservation (Davison 2008; Hare 2015). Indeed, the reality of biodiversity in urban areas—first formalized in the 1992 Rio Convention—is still considered less legitimate than an imagined ‘empty’ wilderness. However, research demonstrates otherwise: Ives et al. (2016), for instance, have shown that Australian cities “contain disproportionately more threatened species than equivalent non-urban areas” (p. 124). Kendal and colleagues (2017) found that, in 69 small grassland reserves in Melbourne, 87% of native species were present, and there were more native species in the combined area of the nine smallest reserves (3.6 hectares) than in the largest three (p. 148). A just-­ released 2019 analysis of 31 international studies found that small isolated patches of habitat hold great significance for species diversity (Wintle et al. 2019). Even footpaths have been found to foster species-rich environments; in a study of 48 kilometers of various surfaced footpath in Blois, France, where pesticide use had been ceased, more than 300 species were found (Bonthoux et al. 2019b). Therefore, while discussion around the scale, heterogeneity, and connectivity of urban habitats is ongoing (Lepczyk et al. 2017) it seems cities, and indeed fragments within cities, can perform important refuge roles (Gallo et al. 2017; Hall et al. 2017; Müller et al. 2018). Bringing these factors together—the challenges of equity and genuine access to nature, the existing and future potential of biodiversity in our urban ecologies—with the desire to foster mental health in practical ways, leads us to seek opportunities for highly occurring, flexible use, creative areas within which nature can flourish. It is within this conceptual ­planning and ecological space that the idea of ‘wild urban natures’ has increasingly been explored (Fig. 2.4).

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Fig. 2.4  Street planter, Berlin, Germany

2.6   Wild Urban Natures In contrast to the semantic and literal implications of the term ‘wilderness’ (discussed above), the term wild has much to offer. ‘Wild’ nature is relational, and mediated through context and culture (Durant et  al. 2019; Jorgensen 2012), and has been used interchangeably with terms such as

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naturalness, authenticity, biodiversity, heterogeneity, and informality (Botzat et al. 2016; Hand et al. 2016; Sharp et al. 2012); as “the wilder”, the more “natural” (Church 2018, p. 893). Wild urban nature has increasingly been evoked to describe the continued habitation of unmanicured, uncultivated, spontaneous vegetation, and non-domesticated animals, in cities, buildings, and urban spaces, and can be understood through (at least) three key modes: a marker of diversity (more species-rich both in plants and animals); a typology based on land use (nature that grows in unexpected locations); and an adjective of disorder (being of a less manicured or maintained composition). Part of the allure of the term ‘wild’ is that it denotes a transgression of the formal delineations of planning and design; growth outside of spaces ‘allocated’ for ‘nature’ (Alaimo 2016). While this risks creating another unhelpful binary—between domesticated and wild nature—it also provides recognition of the ways in which urban nature forges spaces ‘in-­ between’, both ecologically—as fourth nature (Kowarik  2005), novel urban ecosystems (Kowarik et al. 2018) or novel nature (Musacchio 2013); and spatially—as informal greenspace (Rupprecht et  al. 2015), the awkward (Jones 2007), the interstitial (Jorgensen and Tylecote 2007) or terrain vague (Barron and Mariani 2014; Solà-Morales 1995)—that can offer additional delight and restoration in an otherwise controlled urban environment (Twedt et  al. 2016), as ‘urban wilds’ (Desimini 2014). Threlfall and Kendal (2018) describe ‘wild spaces’ as those that “encompass any space or component of an urban ecosystem (e.g. a patch within a park) where there is an absence of ongoing human intervention” (p. 348). While all of these terms have distinct overlaps the key signifier of difference may be the casting of this vegetation as wholly spontaneous or adding an element of design (Sack 2015, p. 61). While brownfields or post-industrial sites have become popular places to focus research on ecological resilience and alternative amenity space, and can be powerful metaphors for liminality, this post-industrial condition is not limited to these sites. Furthermore, in addition to these informal spaces offering opportunity due to their indeterminacy, Franck (2013) has convincingly stated that many of the characteristics posited as unique to terrain vague can be found in all public spaces, as “one encounters the surprising and the unexpected in cities, even without seeking out the strangeness of still-abandoned industrial sites” (p. 166). Wild urban natures are not restricted to a park or other designated nature area, instead emerging in areas such as laneways (Seymour et  al.

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2010), roadside vegetation (Säumel et al. 2016), verges (O’Sullivan et al. 2017), small public spaces (Pett et  al. 2016; Shwartz et  al. 2014), and even small building gaps such as for ferns in Japan (Kajihara et al. 2015). Indeed vegetation along footpaths, in road reserves, roundabouts, median strips, and other infrastructure, are some of the most common ‘green’ spaces that residents of cities encounter in their everyday lives (Bonthoux et al. 2019b; Weber et al. 2014). Their prevalent distribution through cities can also offer more incidental opportunities for experiencing nature (Threlfall and Kendal 2018) such as viewing out a window, walking past or alongside, sitting beside at lunch, offering a point of conversation at the bus stop, during the course of everyday life. Such spaces, and the everyday experience of them, foster feelings of escape and nature within cities (Cheesbrough et  al. 2019; Church 2018) and are crucial to the overall livability of cities (McKinney et al. 2018) (Fig. 2.5). They also provide biodiversity benefits (Botzat et  al. 2016; Kowarik 2019), which can be more important to feelings of restoration than amenities (Wood et al. 2018) and can define people’s favorite places (Schebella et al. 2017). Numerous biodiversity indicators—for example plant, butterfly, and bird species richness (Hoyle et al. 2017)—contribute to a beneficial ‘habitat’ for humans as well as for plants and animals. Furthermore, there is a relatively positive relationship between biodiversity and health and wellbeing (2015), especially perceived biodiversity (through heterogeneity) (Dallimer et al. 2012; Fuller et al. 2007), and these benefits are relational (Marselle et al. 2014). Finally, contrary to earlier studies that indicated a general unease with ‘messy’ landscapes there seems an increasing appreciation of wilder and/ or more natural looking nature (Hoyle et al. 2017; Hwang et al. 2019; Lee et al. 2014) especially as both an aesthetic and ecological contrast to carefully constructed built spaces (Weber et al. 2014) or explicitly manicured green (Gobster and Westphal 2004; Özgüner and Kendle 2006; Qiu et al. 2013). As one study participant commented, “I’ll say it like this: I think this is more restful, being a bit more wild and overgrown… I mean it’s not … it’s not wild … but ‘­wildish’” (Pálsdóttir et al. 2018, p. 318, my italics). Wild urban nature can also challenge us in ways that ultimately are healing. This acknowledgment of nature being sometimes ‘unpleasant’, and not existing just for human benefit, does not undermine the richness of engagements and encounters or their capacity to enable mental health. On the contrary, this more honest engagement can prompt us out of our routine or automatic perceptions of what is

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Fig. 2.5  Verges and gardens, Perth, Australia

‘good’ or ‘bad’ (Bell et al. 2018b) and open us to new understandings of our place in the world. For instance, “decaying logs might make them think about the cycle of life and their place in that cycle” (Cheesbrough et  al. 2019, p.  48), or Australian native grasslands—‘kill-joy’ grasses (Instone 2014)—which not only challenge us to rethink ideas of ‘amenable’ nature, but also “open new possibilities. The unruly native grasses

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are able to open things up and take us elsewhere than the well trodden path of the usual restoration script” (p. 61). To this end, Clayton et al. (2017) implore designers and policymakers to allow a lack of control over how human-nature interactions take place (p.  650). These encounters can enable an authenticity of emotion, and reflection; as one study interviewee stated, “It just gets me questioning and thinking, but, more like bigger scale. Like, life questions … you know? Like, what makes me happy? Like, what am I really here for? What am I striving for?” (Windhorst and Williams 2015, p. 246).

2.7   Conclusion Rather than flattening out our definitions to make it easier to plan and design in uniform ways, it is not only tolerable but also advantageous to let the vast diversity of the natural environment shape our urban spaces and lives, ensuring there is a ‘continuous transition’. Population-scale studies have convincingly demonstrated robust connections between greenspace and mental health and wellbeing, and there is significant overlap here with both the aims of urban ecology and urban design. Building upon these, we can explore ways in which individuals engage with different natures on the ground. In considering the implications for urban design, practical and perceptive barriers to immediacy and contact of adaptive urban ecologies can be addressed by a combination of creative land use (underutilized or awkward pockets) and fostering of a spontaneous, wild nature through and in these spaces. As we experience the spaces between the buildings, zones, and parks just as strongly, we can cultivate opportunities for daily encounters with nature that can allow un-curated, un-scripted engagement.

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CHAPTER 3

Multisensory Nature and Mental Health

Abstract  This chapter explores diverse, relational, and embodied ways in which nature interactions are experienced, and how these interactions enable opportunities beneficial for mental health and wellbeing. In doing so, this includes briefly charting the stress responses in the body, before exploring the overlapping, multisensory interactions, current research findings, and neurobiological theories offering insights into how and why these interactions can occur. This chapter organizes and explores the findings from these studies in such a way that they could reliably inform spatial and sensory outcomes. Keywords  Neuroscience • Psychology • Mental health • Nature experience • Senses

3.1   Introduction Roger Ulrich’s (1984) seminal observation that patients recovering from surgery responded more quickly, and with less pain medication, with a window view of greenery than with only of a wall, sparked an intensive period of studies into the impact of the natural environment on health and wellbeing. As technologies advanced, this interest found new expression through ‘The decade of the brain’; (one of) the neural ‘turn’(s) (Illes 2012) that reignited fascination with how studies of the brain and nervous system could inform many other disciplines and practices. © The Author(s) 2020 Z. Myers, Wildness and Wellbeing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9923-8_3

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While specific locations and structures of the brain have been found—at various neural scales—to relate to individual experiences of the world around them as ‘neural correlates’ (Lengen and Kistemann 2012), the ‘symptomatic heterogeneity’ of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety (Hacimusalar and Eşel 2018) mean a single neurological biomarker is unlikely (Barch 2013). For instance, an increase in activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC) is connected to sadness, behavioral withdrawal and negative self-reflective processes tied to rumination (Bratman et al. 2015); however, the goal is “not simply to localize cognitive functions to some site in the brain but to find out the patterns of dynamic interaction between different brain systems” (Lopes da Silva 2013, p. 1123). Similarly, while the increased accessibility of technologies such as electroencephalograms (EEG) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has facilitated exponential growth of experimental studies ‘in the field’, it can also falsely promise the discovery of a universal formula in which environments and brains best interact. Ultimately, it is more useful to avoid pursuing or taking solace in environmental determinism (the environment causes the effect in the brain) and/or neural reductionism (the brain explains everything) (Kirmayer and Gold 2012). This chapter will chart the ways in which neurobiological studies examining the interactions between urban nature, perception, and individual mental health and wellbeing can add complementary insights to the current evidence base, through an examination of diverse sensory and emotional engagements with various ‘natures’, such as water, weather, and sound (Fig. 3.1). This exploration will emphasize the embodied and relational experiences of these natures, providing a robust framework for possible design strategies—presented in Chap. 4. The central trope of this chapter then is ‘interaction’: A human–nature interaction is then a particular instance of an individual person being present in the ‘same space’ as nature or perceiving a stimulus from nature (through sight, sound, smell, taste or touch; although in practice, sight and sound tend to predominate). (Gaston et al. 2018, p. 917)

This is crucial as “[c]ompared to mere observation, interactive experiences are likely to be more vivid and multisensory, engaging more emotions and creating a more lasting memory” (Clayton et al. 2017, p. 647). This interaction, in turn, is predicated on the fluidity of both mental health, wellbeing, and place and the relations between them.

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Fig. 3.1  Urban wetland vegetation, Perth, Australia

3.2   Accumulated Exposures, Stress, and Mental Health It is  increasingly confirmed that accumulated and chronic stress and inflammation are large contributors to neurological and mental health, prompting a ‘whole-body’ approach to issues of the mind. What is known as ‘stress’ is a natural physiological response to threat, prompting the body

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into a ‘fight or flight’ response. When this threat is perceived as continual, and that heightened stress becomes chronic, it is called the ‘allostatic load’: “the ‘wear and tear’ the body experiences” (Juster et al. 2010, p. 3). The allostatic load is a contributor to mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression (Gidlow et al. 2016; Streit et al. 2014; Vaisvaser et al. 2013; Ward Thompson et al. 2012) not least because it relates to a self-­ perception of a loss of control (McEwen 2012). The amygdala is a core processing location of the neurological system in assessing and responding to perceptions of threat, and changes in its functioning are implicated in anxiety and defensive aggression (Etkin and Wager 2007; Sharpley and Bitsika 2010; Thayer et al. 2012), as well as changes to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, particularly in prolonged depression (Leistedt and Linkowski 2013; McEwen 2012) and even from the first depressive episode, but that certain treatments may reverse this (Hacimusalar and Eşel 2018). The organization of spatial environments (and, crucially, our perception of it affording us escape from a threat) affects the extent to which we—in the course of milliseconds—go from perceiving a threat to our brain kick-starting all bodily systems into fight or flight. Specifically, various areas of the brain ascertain whether there is an escape, fueling a specific response (Fich et  al. 2014). This has immense implications for the ways in which the physical environment is designed. Physiological responses to perceived threat occur through the psycho-­ neuro-­endocrine system: the sympathetic-adreno-medullary system (SAM) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis. These systems divert energy from non-urgent functions such as digestion, prime the body for active response, and focus attention intensely, in the process increasing “heart rate, blood pressure, skin conductance and pupil diameter” (van Oort et al. 2017, p. 282). Usually, when the threat is gone or when you realize you are not actually under threat, these systems return to normal relatively promptly. How prompt this return is can be measured by heart rate variability (HRV)—a common form of measurement in restoration studies. Interestingly, HRV tells us about the brain, not the heart per se. As both the amygdala and cardio acceleratory system are under control of the ‘rational’ cognitive part of the brain—the prefrontal cortex—there is considered to be a neural connection between heart rate variability and the brain (Thayer et al. 2012). In other words, the amygdala can be overridden if functionality is brought back to the prefrontal cortex. In addition, perception of control influences the HPA axis (Fich et  al. 2014) and

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a release of cortisol—another common measurement for stress (van Oort et al. 2017). Inflammation in the body is part of this complex system of stress creation and response, and is considered a predictive marker of mental health disorders, including depression and PTSD (Chistyakov et  al. 2018; Eswarappa et al. 2019). Here, the HPA responds to the microbiome like it would stress, “with pathogenic species of bacteria interacting with the immune and endocrine systems to create an inflammatory cascade with an increase in sympathetic reactivity” (Deans 2017, p. 1). Accumulated environmental impact (positive and negative) (Logan et al. 2018) is encompassed in the holistic and temporal concept of the ‘exposome’: a “genome-plus view of the environment, where exposures and processes within and without the body are intertwined” (Prior et al. 2018, p. 543). Exposure to different forms of nature can, alternatively, boost immune function (Li 2010), lower blood pressure (Ideno et  al. 2017), decrease inflammation (Mao et  al. 2012), and provide relief from chronic pain (Han et al. 2016).

3.3   Nature and the Senses Humans are multisensory, and studies repeatedly demonstrate that our senses are incredibly interdependent. Recent research has further begun to illustrate the ways in which ‘synesthesia’—usually considered a neurological ‘cross wiring’ in a small number of people, creating smells for colors, for example—is actually something that can be learned or induced in the general population (Bor et  al. 2014; Nair and Brang 2019). As will be apparent, the following sections therefore overlap and inform each other, despite their separate headings, and should be understood as part of a holistic system of perception. 3.3.1  Viewing The visual system is undeniably predominant in this network of perception (Dima et al. 2018; Salingaros and Masden 2008). The preoccupation with the visual, with a particular focus on picturesque landscapes and a cultivation of culturally ideal aesthetics of nature—one in which nature is there (separate from humans) to be admired, gazed upon, and represented (e.g. through art) but not immersed in. This has been criticized as ‘ocular-­ centric’ especially as it may “overlook the skills of those who necessarily

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prioritise their wider senses, such as people living with visual impairment, perhaps keen (and able) to identify bird species by the subtleties of their calls, or plant species by their unique textures, shapes, and scents” (Bell et al. 2019a, p. 7). That sight is given precedence is apparent in the abundant studies conducted on the effect of viewing nature (of various types) in numerous settings. Research has demonstrated that even viewing a small number of plants indoors can increase pain tolerance (Lohr and Pearson-Mims 2000)—though plant preferences may mediate their effects (Miyake 2001); that viewing nature during ‘micro-breaks’ at work for as little as 40 or 90 seconds (Lee et al. 2015, 2018) can have an effect on wellbeing; natural views such as trees through windows can restore cognition and attention for adults and children more than views of buildings (Tennessen and Cimprich 1995; Wells 2000), especially together with sunlight (Leather et al. 1998) as can murals of nature scenes (Felsten 2009). Such window views are also of benefit to those in physical recovery in a hospital setting (Raanaas et al. 2012) and in enhancing general wellbeing (Kaplan 2001). Watching videos of nature can create a relaxation effect within 4–7 minutes (Ulrich et al. 1991); looking at photos with nature elements for 5 minutes can stimulate the same effect (van den Berg et al. 2015). Cackowski and Nasar (2016) found an increase in frustration tolerance in drivers if they could view roadside vegetation. Jiang et al. (2014) found that “compared with watching a 6-min video with 2% tree cover density, watching a 6-min video with 62% tree cover density resulted in 60% increase in stress recovery” (pp. 619–620). Brain activity associated with relaxation has been observed whether watching a video of a forest for 90 seconds, within 60 seconds of  viewing plants (Park et  al. 2016), and that viewing real plants increases blood concentration to the prefrontal cortex more than an image (Igarashi et  al. 2015). This result has confirmed others (Martínez-­Soto et al. 2013) whose fMRI studies found that images of built form (considered low restorative potential) stimulated a “[a] higher number of activated areas” of the brain (p. 21), suggesting increased attention and effort in processing such scenes, and Grassini et al. (2019), whereby EEG results showed a lower attentional load when looking at images of nature over urban scenes. The significance of these results cannot be overstated; as Cox, Hudson et  al. (2017) found in the study of types and amount of nature experiences over the course of a week, that “For the majority of people, the most common method of experiencing nature is while not

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Fig. 3.2  Potted plants, Split, Croatia

actually being present in it, but by viewing natural scenes through a ­window” (p. 81) (Fig. 3.2). Visual pathways to restoration have been explained through two evolutionary-­based theories. Stress Reduction Theory (SRT; also referred to as Psychoevolutionary Theory), emerged from Ulrich’s hospital study, mentioned above, and posits that green and blue spaces, along with the

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innate patterns, colors, and spatial features of  natural environments, prompt emotional relaxation and stress recovery. SRT is related to the Savanna hypothesis suggesting (specifically) that humans find vistas with large visual scope, scattered trees, and grassland most restorative as we have evolved to find them the safest landscape to inhabit; a theory has been considered as problematic (Haga et al. 2016; Joye and De Block 2011). It is strongly aligned with Biophilia (Wilson 1984), a far broader, cross-disciplinary theory that suggests an innate connection between humans and our natural environment (Townsend and Barton 2018), which has also been critiqued on the basis of its universalism, neglecting the sociocultural and historical contexts that can inform adaptive responses to the vast diversity of natural environments, animals, and vegetation (Joye and De Block 2011) and that “benefits from green and blue spaces are able to be generalized for all of humanity is countered in geographically informed work that explicitly foregrounds experience as always necessarily situated in given times and places” (Atkinson 2019, p. 193). Concurrently, psychologists Stephen and Rachel Kaplan at the University of Michigan sought to uncover the attributes of nature that restored cognitive functioning. Though environmental and landscape preference had been explored since the 1970s (Herzog et  al. 1976; Kaplan 1977; Kaplan et al. 1972) Attention Restoration Theory (ART) posits that by reducing ‘directed attention’—involved in most cognitive tasks requiring focus to ‘involuntary attention’, which is stimuli that is fascinating without needing direct attention, a shift in mood as well as a return to more optimal functioning can occur (additionally, ART also consists of the components of ‘being away’, ‘extent’, and ‘compatibility’, however ‘soft fascination’ has become a significantly studied aspect of its philosophy). Attention is associated with visual cues and the ability to filter out inessential information as we navigate an extremely complex sensory world, which stress can impair and in turn related to decrease ability to tune out distractions (Luo et al. 2018). Indeed viewing nature in real life—even if from a window—seems to hold attention and gaze for longer than a photo of the same scene, indicating a more absorptive or enticing sensory experience (Sun et  al. 2018). Attention fatigue—the reduced ability to direct attention—can weaken the ability to cognitively address more maladaptive thoughts or processes (such as rumination or incessant worry) and/or to filter out more negatively perceived stimuli such as particular noises in an urban area—though not innately stressful

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(Hartig and Jahncke 2017; Kaplan 1995). ART has similarly been critiqued, and  far more rigor of  the examination of its tenets is required (Joye and Dewitte 2018). So if explanations of visual mechanisms to stress recovery and restoration may be potentially limited, then an examination of the multisensory interactions with nature hold more promise (Fig. 3.3).

Fig. 3.3  Urban orchard, Perth, Australia

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3.3.2  Listening There is a significant neurological connection between the visual and the auditory. Sound is significant to the ways in which people experience public space (Kang et  al. 2016; Matos Wunderlich 2013), and different from ‘noise’ as “[w]hen sound is perceived as noise, the effects are most pronounced when it is loud, unpredictable…, and uncontrollable” (Mace et al. 2016). Perceptions of sounds and noise are highly relevant to mental restoration and physical relaxation (Annerstedt et al. 2013; Wilson et al. 2016) and seem to aid recovery from stress through  two complementary means: the mediation of negative noise and the presence of positive sounds. In this context urban sounds (people, car and air traffic, and machinery) are usually categorized negatively (and as ‘noise’), while nature sounds (birds, breeze, cicadas, and rain) are perceived positively (Zhang et  al. 2018), and facilitate faster stress recovery (Benfield et  al. 2010; Benfield et al. 2014), even when decibel levels are identical (Alvarsson et al. 2010). In other words, the ‘tranquility’ one feels in various kinds of nature experiences is not necessarily that of the quiet idyll, but of a loud harmony of bird and insect calls, or the roar of waves, or gusty wind in trees. It is the type of sound that fascinates and captures attention, restores, and relaxes. This relational quality of sound has been confirmed in other studies (Laso et  al. 2017) and has been demonstrated in two ways. First, the importance of the visual context to sound perception; as Pheasant et al. (2010) have found, “perception of tranquility represents a complex interplay between the visual and auditory activity evoked by everyday scenes” (p. 508). In other words, what you see has a strong influence on what you hear (Liu et al. 2019). This has been backed up by studies using fMRI to measure auditory effect on brain activity, finding that visual context was significant in altering auditory perception: that the sounds of cars driving down freeway, and waves crashing at beach were perceived differently, even when heard at the same decibel level (Hunter et al. 2010). Viewing nature also mitigates negative effects of noise, both in altering perception of noise annoyance through nearby greenspace to use (Gidlöf-Gunnarsson and Öhrström 2007) or view of greenery (Van Renterghem 2019), or the ocean (Li et  al. 2012). Secondly, avoiding the tendency to therefore assume all nature sounds are perceived as restorative, studies have also found that sounds are context-dependent, meaning that cultural associations, season, time of day can shape perceptions of, for instance, bird songs and squawks (Marselle et  al. 2014; Ratcliffe et  al. 2013; Ratcliffe and

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Korpela 2016). This poses challenges for those who may be sight impaired and who rely on their auditory systems, and where loud noise (natural or otherwise) is a barrier (Bell et al. 2019b, p. 276). Sound can also affect walking speed, with nature sounds such as waves slowing pace, and potentially having impact then on relaxation (Maculewicz et al. 2016). Sound provides an element of ‘authenticity’ to nature, and its absence when assessing restoration via the visual only significantly alters the sensory experience (Brooks et  al. 2017), as being in nature has a “stronger, more reliable effect” (Stevenson et al. 2018, p. 38) on restoration than merely viewing it. As such, design needs more than views and aesthetics to have an impact, to appreciate nature as a “dynamic multimodal experience” (Conniff and Craig 2016, p. 105), and our senses as intricately connected (Casini 2017). 3.3.3  Enrichment Lengen and Kistemann (2012) remind us that the neural processes involved with these interactions also involve sound, smell, taste, touch, “and other perception systems such as the vestibular system, deep sensibility, sense of vibration, temperature and pain, our perception and memory system [which]  decodes and encodes environmental information”  (p. 1165). To this end the neurobiological theory of ‘environmental enrichment’ offers a more holistic mechanism of how the interactions between individuals and their changing environments impact the brain. The benefits of enriched environments are based upon increased opportunities for motor and sensory and social interactions through novelty and complexity (Hannan 2014; Kühn et al. 2017), and are specifically enhanced when that enrichment takes a natural form (Lambert et  al. 2016). Significantly, it seems that it is the interaction that is key, not exposure to the environment (Lambert et  al. 2015). Environmental enrichment can also create and change neuron circuitry, increasing brain structural and functional plasticity (Kühn et  al. 2017; Nithianantharajah and Hannan 2006), reducing activity of the amygdala (Lambert et al. 2016) and increasing neurological resilience (Hutchinson et al. 2012). McEwen (2012) shows that parts of the brain in non-active adults increase volume after an hourly  walk, taken  almost daily  (p. 17183), and proximity to natural environments benefits cognitive aging (Cherrie et  al. 2018) and the advancement of multisensory interventions in a range of neurological conditions (Miller et al. 2009).

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Studies so far suggest that there is an optimal level of enrichment that produces positive effects, above which time it becomes ‘too much’; such as when considering urban environments as ‘brain training’ to slow cognitive aging (Cassarino and Setti 2015). In their 2017 study, Kühn and colleagues explored the connection between brain plasticity and environmental enrichment, showing that urban upbringing is connected to detrimental effects in the brain, as a symptom of being—in other words—‘over-­enriched’. The significance of this model of ‘enrichment’ is that it could assist with understanding—and augmenting—aspects of the material and sensory environment that encourage neural flexibility and engagement, without over stimulating. This shift in perspective can alter prioritizing of urban amenities and functionalities towards elements that can invite experiences for nature interaction (Fig. 3.4). This threshold seems to hold true for the detrimental effects of under-­ stimulation in urban environments. In their study of how the sensory and physical environment impacted on Bristol residents’ walking routines and choices, Bornioli et al. (2019) found that Many participants reported that walking through housing estates was “boring [because] every house looks the same [and] there is nothing to look at”. Some people stated that the modern built environment of Bristol can be “bland”, “basic”, “uniform”, and “not that interesting” as “everything looks built for purpose”. While variety was described as stimulating, some participants felt that lack of variety was boring and uninspiring, and decided to avoid walking in certain areas. (p. 209)

These environments can be viewed as a ‘comfort bubble’ devoid of the interest and encounters that create meaningful interactions. In their article ‘City of unpleasant feelings’ Brighenti and Pavoni (2017) describe the way in which depression has overtaken stress as the ‘problem of urban life’: “For the inhabitants of the artificial continent of comfort, the neat result of all these incapacitations reverberates in the feeling of boredom—ultimately, a manifestation of depression. Comfort city is, in other words, the locus of depression” (p.  144). These concepts of enrichment and boredom can be insightful ways in which sensory experiences, and diversity and complexity of natural environments, can be explored. 3.3.4  Moving Environmental enrichment can also offer a perspective on how and why moving through and in nature is often mentally restorative. While the

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Fig. 3.4  Road reserve, Melbourne, Australia

mental health benefits associated with physical activity are well established in both prevention and treatment of anxiety and depression (Kvam et al. 2016; Penedo 2005; Robertson et  al. 2012) exercising in nature, also known as ‘green exercise’ (Barton et al. 2012; Barton and Pretty 2010) or facilitating the ‘green mind’ (Pretty et al. 2017), has been found to dramatically augment these effects of nature spaces on cognitive and psycho-

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logical function and mood (Pasanen et al. 2014; Thompson Coon et al. 2011). Studies have shown mental health benefits (a variety of measures such as improved self-esteem, mood, and decreased stress and anxiety) from various forms of exercise (Mackay and Neill 2010; Rogerson et al. 2016). Walking in nature for at least 30  minutes provides a sustained restorative effect afterwards (Gidlow et al. 2016), and hour-long nature walks are especially beneficial for those struggling with mental health issues (Roe and Aspinall 2011). Walking for 50 minutes in a park can have beneficial cognitive effects for those with a major depressive disorder (Berman et al. 2012), and a 90 minute walk decreased brain activity associated with rumination (Bratman et al. 2015). Participants wearing EEGs showed that walking between the environments was significant, finding that moving from a built-up retail commercial area to a park showed reductions in arousal, frustration, and engagement (i.e., directed attention), and an increase in meditation (Aspinall et  al. 2015). Coastal and water environments also seem to both attract and encourage physical activity (Fig. 3.5). Studies of 32 Berlin residents (Honold et al. 2016), for example, found that a green trail alongside a canal was not only the most

Fig. 3.5  Creek, Melbourne, Australia

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used site in the study, but those who used it once a week or more also showed lower cortisol samples. One of the mechanisms proposed to explain this augmentation of effect is that the unpredictable and multisensory elements of the outdoors “demands engagement”, and that “active exploration and the acquisition of skills and mastery” and the “adaptation to the fundamental variability of the natural environment” foster mental health (Araújo et  al. 2019, p. 143). This is different, therefore, from the interruptions and stimulation of a busy urban street, which require more vigilance (Bornioli et al. 2019). One way in which this occurs is textured touch through topography and surfaces is experienced through the feet—such as the pressure, interest, effort of textures and surfaces (Nettleton 2015), which offer engagements with nature that are challenging forms of ‘play’ (Gandy 2016, p. 436; Yeh et al. 2016, p. 950). 3.3.5  Feeling Myriad forms of touch are significant in understanding health-enabling interactions with nature, with different neurological pathways differentiating between “light touch, deep pressure, painful pressure, inflammation, and other somatic events” (Kragel et al. 2018, p. 268–7). The most direct form of touching nature is through the hands, found to increase cerebral blood flow indicating a positive relaxation response (Koga and Iwasaki 2013). Gardening has long been part of therapy programs, with 30 minutes of gardening being enough to decrease depression and increase self-­ esteem and mood (Wood et  al. 2016), and found to have consistently positive outcomes for diverse groups of people, including those with both chronic and acute mental health issues, substance abuse, older adults, those with cognitive decline, as well as for general wellbeing (Gonzalez et  al. 2010; Soga et  al. 2017; van den Berg and Custers 2011). Direct contact with microbes from soil and plants have been found to play a significant part here, potentially  diversifying the human microbiome, and  contributing to the reduction of  inflammation-fueled mood disorder (Robinson et al. 2018). More diffuse forms of  touch—through the sensations on the skin, such as sun, air, and rain—are important to mental health, as gentle sensations can be healing in the context of past abuse (Bell 2018, p.  12). However, the sensation of ‘feeling’ something is not a passive state but “the embodied skills of receptivity and stillness” (Obrador-Pons 2015,

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p.  207); a ‘commingling’ with an element we cannot ‘touch’ (Ingold 2007, p. S29). For instance, absorbing the heat of the sun is a recurring visceral experience with nature in numerous studies, as: “[a]llowing the sun in, warming the skin, and feeling relaxed and sleepy are some of the main delights people find in sunbathing. Sunbathing is first and foremost an act of openness to the sun as well as an awareness of temperature” (Obrador-Pons 2015, p. 206). In Pálsdóttir et al.’s study of effects of a designed rehabilitation garden (2018), one participant described it this way: “How long I stayed there depended on the weather; if it was warm I liked to sit for a very long time—preferably a long time, because it felt like I was at a petrol station; yeah, you just fill up and fill up and fill up” (p. 315). This may also be due to increase of Vitamin D production from being in the sun, known to affect neurotransmitters associated with mood (Beute and de Kort 2014). In contrast with the detrimental effects of over-saturation of artificial light (and our lack of darkness in cities) (Edensor 2013), sunlight is perceived in myriad ways: ‘scattered light’, ‘filtered light’, ‘sharp light’, ‘light that blinds’, ‘direct light’, ‘direct sun’, ‘a glare’, ‘seasonal light’, ‘healthy light’, ‘pleasant light’, ‘negative light’ (Hauge 2015, p. 81). The multiplicity of perception disrupts a simple binary of light and dark, and vision-­ impairment and sight itself operates on a continuum, with perception of light being significant to experiences of the outdoors (Bell et al. 2019b). In addition, the eyes also can ‘feel’; as when “we have only to stand before a warm fire, or alternatively to find ourselves outside on a windy or frosty day” (Ingold 2005, p. 101). Allen-Collinson and Leledaki (2014) term these experiences “elemental haptics”—an expansion of proprioception (a sense of yourself in space) with the visceral: “‘internally felt sensations’ (Hayes Conroy and Hayes Conroy 2008)” (p. 16). Haptic sensations, or feelings, of the air—despite its invisible ephemerality—and feeling immersed in it are significant here (Papale et  al. 2016, p.  5), and are repeatedly described as beneficial to mental wellbeing. In interviews with Indigenous people in Victoria, Australia, discussing their experiences of nature one woman stated, If I smell pretty land my heart feels better my head feels better … in cultural Australia we didn’t always take food or medicine orally some of it was sitting in amongst these plants and smelling the aromas and letting it soak through … you’re in a spiritual place—calm and centered…. (Kingsley et  al. 2009, p. 295)

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Forest bathing is one such example, being extensively studied across countries in northern Europe: Finland (Ojala et  al. 2018; Tyrväinen et  al. 2014); Denmark (Stigsdotter et  al. 2017); and Poland (Bielinis et  al. 2018); and Asia: Japan (Lee et al. 2009, 2011; Morita et al. 2007; Park et al. 2010, 2011; Takayama et al. 2014; Tsunetsugu et al. 2013; Yamaguchi et  al. 2006), China (Hassan et  al. 2018), South Korea (Sop Shin et  al. 2007), and Taiwan (Yu et al. 2017, 2018). Being in the midst of a forest has been found to lead to restoration and reduced stress; have an effect on endocrine function and psychological mood; increase parasympathetic nervous system activity and general feelings of wellbeing and vitality; and decrease feelings of depression, anxiety, anger, and fatigue (Fig. 3.6). 3.3.6  Immersion Neurologically, insights into these perceptions of connection and merging can be elucidated through the concept of multisensory ‘peri-personal space’ (PPS): the space close to the body. PPS is our ‘boundary’ between us and the environment; at once a “sensory-motor interface” between, and “body-centered representation” of, the space around us (Spaccasassi et al. 2019, pp. 42–43). PPS is crucial to our sense of self embodied in space—through our vestibular system for example—“as it is where all physical interactions between the individual and the environment take place” (Serino 2019, p. 139). PPS can be understood as a set of continuous fields describing physiological responses, which reflect the behavioural relevance of actions aiming to create or avoid contact between objects and the body. (Bufacchi and Iannetti 2018, p. 1088)

It consists of three core visual-somatic ‘fields’ (Gentile et al. 2015) that provide a feeling of bodily integrity: around 50–60 centimeters around your face, 30–45 centimeters around your hand, and 70–80 centimeters around the center of your body. These respond to visual and auditory cues in the same area (Serino 2019), and are malleable, with walking (Bufacchi and Iannetti 2018, p.  1080) with sounds up to 165 centimeters away ­creating fast response times (Noel et  al. 2015) and sound (Ferri et  al. 2015) among others altering response rates to stimuli. It also appears that the audio-visual works interdependently in defining the extent of these spaces, as found in recent experiments on PPS following brief sensory

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Fig. 3.6  Urban park, Zurich, Switzerland

deprivation, giving a feeling of “being lost in space” (Noel et  al. 2018, p. 70). In other words, we simultaneously process (accurately) where something is in the space around us through our senses and can respond immediately through our bodies. The implications of such findings are significant, indicating that our sense of bodily integrity can extend beyond

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our physical self, conceptualizing the human-nature interactions and their meanings and benefits. These opportunities to merge with these spaces builds on our ‘peri-personal space’ exemplified by the experiences of one study’s  interviewee, Elsie (Waitt et  al.  2009): “Indeed, regular walkers’ bodies intermingle with this place to an extent that makes it difficult for Elsie to articulate where her body ends and the environment begins” (p. 48). While touted as ‘blue space’—the corollary to ‘green space’—water, and the experience of sensing water,  recurs in the literature  as a significant mode of restoration (MacKerron and Mourato 2013; Nordh et al. 2011; White et al. 2013). This is amplified and diversified by the vast types of water environments, both coastal and inland. In urban areas, these can include anything from fountains, ponds, streams, boardwalks over lakes, to pathways along canals, and river edges. Views of water are also significant, with those from home associated with lower psychological distress (Garrett et al. 2019; Nutsford et al. 2016), with visits to blue space associated with lower risk of depression. Experiments using fMRI to assess brain activity of different types of landscapes found that water required less visual attention focus than urban areas (Tang et al. 2017) (Fig. 3.7). These multisensory experiences are restorative for older adults (de Bell et al. 2017; Coleman and Kearns 2015). Walking interviews in Vancouver

Fig. 3.7  Canal, Berlin, Germany

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(Finlay et al. 2015) revealed the importance spaces in their everyday lives, such as koi ponds and an ocean-side pathway, where there were “opportunities in warmer weather to physically experience the water (e.g. dipping one’s fingers or feet in the water)” (p. 100). The temporal elements of water are repeatedly noted as a significant restorative facet of these experiences (Bell et al. 2015) such as observing changing tides (Ashbullby et al. 2013; Hipp and Ogunseitan 2011; Wyles et al. 2016) as are effects of light upon the surface or the waves (Volker and Kistemann 2015; White et al. 2010), “seeing the sun rise and set over the waterways; and watching waves breaking on the shore” (Jones et al. 2016, p. 125); reflectiveness and clarity of water (Herzog 1985; Nasar and Li 2004); the “sensual perception of blue space are the sound of water, its colour, clarity, motion, and context” (Volker and Kistemann 2011, p. 454). This temporality is also connected to its changeability over time, such as in interviews about waterways in South East Queensland (Jones et al. 2016), where “it changes on a daily basis, it’s never the same twice. Every time you wake up and you gaze across Moreton Bay there’s something different happening” (p.  125). Similarly, one ocean swimmer in Ireland stated that, “The thing to remember is that every time you get into the sea, the sea is different to what it was the day before, it’s never the same sea that you get into” (Foley and Kistemann 2015, p. 224). A sense of immersion in the haptic sensations of water is also a crucial element to many people; in Game and Metcalf’s interviews with regular visitors to Bondi Beach (2011) one interviewee states, I love it, love it. I love the connection with the elements… When I’m running, I look at the water a lot and I watch the waves. I try to listen to it and focus on it. Then when you finish running, and you dive into the water, there is this relief… So the swim is an important part. An integral part. (p. 48)

Experiences and perceptions of water aren’t unequivocally positive (Pitt 2019), and swimming practices in nature can be mediated by age, gender, ethnicity, and “other socio-demographics of participation” (Atkinson 2019, p. 200). The embodied, enmeshed sense of the water and of being in it create a mix of differing internal and external sensations that merge, such as temperature, bodily movement, empowerment, as discussed in Throsby’s (2013) account of the female body in open water marathon swimming.

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3.3.7  Fluctuations The changeability of nature, and ourselves within it, can be understood through the ideas of “place-rhythms of everyday urban spaces” (Matos Wunderlich 2013, p.  384) which manifest and influence psychological health and wellbeing in a number of ways. Firstly studies show that one of the key features of natural environments that engage and fascinate people are their ability to mark the passage of time, whether through seasonal changes to foliage, activities of insects, birds or other animals influenced by flowers blooming, or increasing inclement weather, and the sometimes daily shifts between rain, sun, and wind, that change behavior, sounds, sights, and experiences (Krenichyn 2006; Richardson et  al. 2015). This can also be found in the planting of fruits and vegetables, or in active engagement in gardening that explicitly connects the individual to the cycle of sowing, growing, and harvesting (Schebella et  al. 2017). In a series of interviews with 50 Winnipeg residents 62% stated that their gardens heightened their connection to nature through multisensory and biodiverse elements. As one stated, “the most rewarding experience was the process by introducing different plants, more local plants. I could see how the whole environment of the garden changed. We got a lot more insects. I mean our front garden was buzzing with insects” (Raymond et al. 2018, p. 263). Odors and scents also form  part of this temporality, with encounters being unpredictable and highly emotive (Haviland-Jones et al. 2013), as well as contextual (Schloss et al. 2015) as “the olfactory realm connects with different forms of corporeal and material permeability, as well as synesthetic dimensions to time and memory” (Gandy 2017, p. 358). Smell is strongly connected to taste, and positive smells associated with urban life are often associated with competing odors of food (Degen and Rose 2012), as well as smells associated with disgust—“the smell and taste of pollution … the sight and smell of vomit and urine” (Adams et al. 2015, p. 213). In contrast, many nature scents are consistently affirmed as positive, such as “the smell of cut grass” and “the smell of the frangipani tree” (Richardson et al. 2015, p. 613). One older community gardener stated, for instance, I used to sit in the dirt. Just sit in the dirt. And do my gardening. Because it’s me. Barefoot, sitting in the dirt, enjoying the earth. And it has a good feeling … the soil. It smells good … Did you ever smell the soil? Especially after a rain? It smells so good. And don’t look at me like I’m crazy. [laughter]. (Wang and Glicksman 2013, p. 97)

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Similarly, rain can be connected to taste, as in  one study with children walking in all-weather nature environments, where, Another turned his head to the sky, closed his eyes and poked out his tongue. He then wandered around for sometime, collecting as many drops as he could in this way (Taylor and Rooney 2016). (Rooney 2018, p. 183)

This ‘inhalation’ may  also be associated with the more indefinable and ephemeral associations of ‘fresh air’, as another interviewee commented, “I love the smell of it, just being and breathing the nice air … it’s just like once I am in an area like, it’s like [huge sigh]” (Cheesbrough et al. 2019, p. 48). Finally, many studies have found the enduring association of ‘being in nature’ with ‘stillness’; Bell, Wheeler, and Phoenix (2016) state that this can be attributed to either “the stillness of the body through pleasurable multisensory immersion or stillness of the mind through movement, experiencing emotional transitions” (p. 95). Stillness “can be as compelling as the excitement of movement on a blustery day (Taylor and Rooney 2016)” (Rooney 2018, p. 184). Interestingly, this manifests also through the ways in which perception warps (and is altered by) nature, such as walking in nature seeming to ‘slow time’ (Davydenko and Peetz 2017). This kind of ‘time elasticity’ can be crucial to those who are feeling time-poor and pressured; it also provides a feeling of escape and revitalization (Waitt and Knobel 2017), or enables individuals to ‘switch off’ from day-to-day life (Pitt 2014, p. 87). Reflecting this acknowledgment of the crucial dimension of time to the experience of place is the growing number of studies seeking to conduct their experiments not only ‘in the field’ but as their participants literally move through spaces, to measure psychological and physiological responses to environments in real time. These measurements are not only important due to the quantifying of specific  interactions between place and individual, but also to observing with far more nuance the diversity of ways in which people move in the outside world.

3.4   Conclusion This vast and growing evidence base—only highlighted in this chapter— shows how human engagement with nature is dynamic and multisensory—we don’t just see a beautiful landscape but we feel the sun and wind, sense the texture in the ground, hear multiple sounds both near and far.

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Furthermore, these senses are difficult to untangle from each other. We notice not only how natural environments change every day or season or year, but also that we change with them. Designing natural spaces that can provide opportunities for mental health and wellbeing means allowing these natures to grow over time in the gaps ‘in-between’; letting urban nature be wild so that we can experience genuine and meaningful interaction. Attention to different elements of nature—water, light, sound, sun, and texture—offers diverse and individual ways of interacting, moving, feeling nature on our skin, and breathing it into our airways, and a constant reflection of how we—our health, our lives—are never fixed in place. It is crucial, then, that urban design that draws on these studies to validate the need for nature interactions in our cities accepts the open-ended and fluid ways in which humans and nature influence each other, over time. What these studies so extensively, and fascinatingly, demonstrate is that any tendency to standardize urban nature or its impact on mental health misses an opportunity to un-design urban areas, letting wild nature reemerge in pockets and offering genuine moments that can potentially enable individual healing, calm, and restoration.

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CHAPTER 4

Urban Nature and Designing for Mental Health

Abstract  Cities have limit on the space available for nature, so creative ways to improve human wellbeing through the provision of local opportunities to interact with natural elements are vital. This chapter offers five key design principles, and their associated pragmatic strategies, which are low cost, low maintenance, ‘safe to fail’ design interventions that increase opportunities for experiences with nature, without requiring additional land or planning, and potentially decreasing costs of  maintenance of local greenspaces, as well as health expenditure in general. Keywords  Urban design • Nature • Informal spaces • Planning • Wild

4.1   Introduction This chapter proposes that ‘wild urban nature’—a combination of ‘in-­ between’ land use, urban design, and ecologies—multiplies opportunities for dynamic, multisensory, accessible, and equitable interactions with urban nature, which in turn can enable mental health and wellbeing. It will offer five key design principles and their associated practical strategies, drawing on the findings and explorations of embodied and relational interactions between individuals and natural environments in the previous chapter to present open-ended, flexible interventions into our cities. The central design proposition, then, is that immediate, incidental, and incre-

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mental urban nature presents  the most effective means to increase opportunities for meaningful interactions between humans and the natural environment (and therefore potentially benefits mental health and urban ecology). Furthermore,  these outcomes  could ultimately be achieved through a specific biodiverse land use: a revived commitment to informal land use and biodiverse wild urban ecologies to allow for maximum engagement with multisensory and embodied experiences. A fundamental falsity in thinking about the scope of ‘urban nature’ is conceptualizing it in pockets of highly dense, inner city areas. However, the endless sprawl of suburbia is often as much, or more so, deficient in nature comprising the key sensory elements elucidated in Chap. 3, as is the prevalence of subdivision of lots that replace a single house and garden with multiple single or double story units that leave no green space or the traditional backyard (Hall 2008), and also what in Australia has been called ‘backyard infill’: the subdivision of private lots to maximize housing space, often built right up to the lot boundary (Bolleter 2016). In some countries, namely Australia, the United States, and Britain, increasing population coupled with lack of city boundaries and market forces have led to ever increasing sprawl, such that the boundary between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ is diluted with a monocultural, and often nature-less, endless suburbia. The composition of the expeditious rollout of cheap housing usually leads to a razed earth approach to subdivision and housing development. Haaland and van den Bosch (2015) found, in their meta-analysis of 15 years of research into challenges to densifying cities, that not only is there the loss of neighborhood greenspace and gardens but also the loss of their quality, their perception as low priority, the potential endurance of social inequities, and the complexities of encouraging or ensuring residents maintain trees and other vegetation on their own land. It has been argued that there is a paucity of scientific translation into built environment/urban design research generally (Wilkie et al. 2019); an issue that must be addressed in the planning and design disciplines to maximize effective land use and spatial outcomes. To this end, the design strategies proposed in this chapter are relevant whether those are low/ medium density residential areas that are starved of naturally occurring, multisensory nature (whether by unimaginative parks and/or removal of plants and trees for development) or highly populated and compact inner city neighborhoods. In this manner nature can be viewed as ‘a public health tool’ (Nesshover et al. 2017; van den Bosch and Ode Sang 2017). Grounding this design approach are the  importance of embodiment and the primacy of everyday routines and habits as they are carried out,

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enjoyed, and lived, not a functional template of space arrangement based on an imagined norm. This approach is also relational in that it accepts the temporality of health and place, resisting static design or expected outcomes from fixed locations (Plane and Klodawsky 2013). Finally, it is equitable, in that it seeks to disrupt assumptions of standardized individuals, and addresses more immediate, proportional land use, for “[u]rban spaces that are susceptible to appropriation, adaptation or change are likely to be more usable by a greater diversity of users, and by extension, more durable in the long term” (Jorgensen and Lička 2012, p.  232). Urban design has a unique role to play in the ways in which these findings can be implemented in creative configurations in urban areas, with less prescriptive design agendas and more adoption of flexible, community-driven strategies.

4.2   Urban Nature: Immediate, Incidental, and Incremental Nature in urban spaces is at its most accessible and equitable state when it is immediate (right outside your door or window; on your street; wherever you may be in the city), incidental—part of “unremarkable or mundane” routines and habits (Beery et al. 2017; Bell et al. 2015; Binnie et al. 2007), and incremental (and accumulated) over the course of your days, weeks, and life (Fig. 4.1). This can involve any or all of the senses—an opportunity to touch plants as you walk by, smell flowers or eucalyptus, hear cicadas, see birds in trees, have a brief moment of sun on your skin on an otherwise cold morning, or a bracing gust of wind as you move. Furthermore, research using smartphones to measure feelings of wellbeing in real time has shown that “short-term exposure to specific natural features has measurable beneficial effects on mental well-being” and that the “time-lasting impact of nature on mental well-being that can still be observed after several hours” (Bakolis et al. 2018, p. 140). These routine interactions are therefore ‘enough’ to cultivate the connection to biodiverse nature that contributes to mental wellbeing (Prévot et al. 2018). In other words, while some may argue that a trip to a lush forest could be an ‘ideal’ dose for mental health restoration, even if such a space exists close to (or within) your city, for most people a few hours out of one’s everyday life, not to mention a few days for a more immersive ‘wilderness’ experience, would be highly unrealistic in time, money, safety, access, and mobility.

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Fig. 4.1  Verges and gardens, Perth, Australia

The appropriation of informal, existing, and underutilized spaces across neighborhoods and cities—a multitude of sites outside of those t­ raditionally designated as recreation or nature spaces, such as larger parks and sporting fields (Fischer et al. (2018)—can create ‘low stakes’ ecosystems (Brownell 2015) (Fig. 4.2). The distribution of these pockets—weaving as they do through our streets, past our homes, next to our windows, over our roofs—

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Fig. 4.2  Vacant lot/playspace, Berlin, Germany

means that a wholly more democratic, equitable, and everyday form of nature will be allowed to repopulate our neighborhoods. While some inbetween spaces, such as alleys/laneways, are considered ambivalently due to their more hidden qualities (Seymour et al. 2010), by opening up dialogue about their potential with the people that live in the neighborhood a raft of possibilities may emerge. The revisiting of common measures of who uses, or benefits from, these spaces as they exist currently, such as proximity, is crucial; In terms of equitable access, having to travel to a specific destination—to feel relaxed—is undermined by the ways in which moving around urban areas can exacerbate stress and anxiety through different modes of embodied movement and sensory perception (Middleton and Byles 2019).

4.3   Design Principles and Strategies All of the design strategies that follow are already in practice, however not for their direct impact on mental health, and sometimes in ad hoc, or shortterm, landscape or research interventions. The discussion of these measures here, then, is to create a purposeful and integrated approach to designing for mental health and wellbeing through our everyday nature interactions. There is no design approach (to my knowledge) that explicitly

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incorporates an evidence-based, framework to design for mental health, through nature, in urban open space, and even more so to ‘non-­traditional’ areas of urban nature. In many cases, an acknowledgment and permitting of what is, rather than what is presumed or is simply the status quo, and allowing rather than restricting are central to the (un)design of natural urban spaces that will facilitate these experiences, knowing “when to stand back: doing nothing, or doing as little as possible” (Jorgensen and Lička 2012, p. 234). Importantly, this approach is concerned with incremental change, where small-scale interventions can quite literally grow over time and provide enough creative and practical flexibility to adjust if not successful. These interventions are low maintenance, low cost, ‘and safe to fail’ (Ahern et al. 2014), but offer maximum impact (Bakolis et al. 2018; Jorgensen and Lička 2012). 4.3.1  Turn Attention Back to Our Streets One of the ways in which opportunities for restorative interaction can be encouraged is through a (re)focus on neighborhood streets as a primary site of engagement with the natural world (Thwaites et  al. 2005). This refocus can assist increased  interaction with nature, and therefore support mental health and wellbeing, in three key ways. The first is through the amplification of street gardens and spaces. While the ideal of a private backyard in which to relax diminishes (despite, for instance, Australians’ desire to “live outdoors, in private”) (Wheeler 2010, p. 5), the front of the house can be utilized as a space that encourages people out of their houses, to walk, or simply be. Some of the biggest constraints to visiting designated green or nature spaces, such as fears regarding safety or wildlife, limitations on physical accessibility and distance, and lack of time, could be resolved by re-prioritizing streets as park-like. Private gardens are significantly more used than parks (Cox et  al. 2017), can be more health enabling (Dennis and James 2017), and are perceived as a ‘refuge’ (Freeman et al. 2012). Residential trees provide the vast majority of nature contact (Cox et al. 2019), and most health benefits (Kardan et al. 2015), and attention to small measures such as bird feeders may offer disproportionately positive outcomes, offering a moment of wildlife interaction that brings satisfaction (Cox and Gaston 2015). In addition to increased biodiversity—creating more opportunities for multisensory interaction— these measures also multiply the contact with environmental microbiota, fostering additional physiological  pathways for positive mental health (Prescott et al. 2016). Extending these advantages of private space into the public street could maximise these benefits.

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While the encouragement of more drought-resistant native flora in the place of lawn for verges has begun, this is often ad hoc and relies on the preferences of individual residents. While verges are technically government-­owned they are often resident managed and therefore these issues of individual agency and upkeep are paramount. However, research has shown that there is a strong sociocultural component to preferences in front yards (Hunter and Brown 2012; Kirkpatrick et al. 2009); a ‘social contagion’ that is exemplified by the inclination to mirror other styles and environmental preferences of the neighborhood context in which people live (Kurz and Baudains 2010; Larsen and Harlan 2006; Stewart et  al. 2019), as well as feel in step with social norms (Welsch and Kühling 2018) which could similarly translate to front verges with increasing biodiversity and other benefits (Goddard et al. 2013; O’Sullivan et al. 2017). Opening up dialogues about planting preferences in private gardens and verges can help facilitate a cluster effect whereby groups of individual greenspaces form a larger pocket to foster animal and plant habitats (Aronson et al. 2017) and connectivity (Rudd et al. 2002). Indeed, we can build upon Goddard et al.’s (2010) proposition regarding the clustering of greenspaces to increase species richness, by seeing gardens (and verges) as part of a continuous connection, and these, in turn, to existing parks. Native planting can also provide important habitats for bees (Threlfall et al. 2015), as well as foster the diversity of plant life (Shwartz et al. 2014). Secondly, the attention to street greening acknowledges the use of local non-traditional spaces for play and activity, especially in making the paths ‘play-routes’ themselves (Krishnamurthy 2019). This addresses the inequities associated with greenspace distribution, accessibility, and quality across cities, as well as the deficiencies in parks and playgrounds in relation to inclusivity (Perry et  al. 2018). Indeed, parents and children make choices about where to play often dictated by fears relating to “very real risks which result from multi-faceted social and structural factors” which should disrupt the narrative that children’s nature interactions are only limited by “hyper-parenting or invasive parenting styles aimed at over-­ protecting children” (Gerlach et al. 2019, p. 85). Having safe and accessible outdoor spaces is particularly important for adolescent girls, as over 5 hours outside play per week can reduce psychosomatic symptoms such as dizziness, stomach ache, and nervousness, all associated with poor mental health (Piccininni et al. 2018). Simple interventions can be made by relaxing regulations around use of residential verges. For instance,  the

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City of Vincent, a local government area in inner city Perth, recently revised one of its policies, removing the requirement for Council approval for changes to verges such as swings, cubby houses and landscaping, and increasing the use of local streets for play (City of Vincent 2018). These considerations also apply to adult physical activity through appreciation of the current use of existing, non-traditional nature spaces for exercise. For example, one study found that 87% of visits to formal parks took place on weekend afternoons (41%) (Veitch et al. 2015). This means that rather than requiring more parks or sporting fields for physical exercise (Schipperijn et al. 2013), or assuming that a single type of greenspace is needed at all (Jansen et al. 2017), attention should be paid to the informal spaces along residential streets, as they are often overlooked sites of preferred physical activity (Ettema 2016; Rosenberg et al. 2010; Sugiyama et  al. 2009)  (Fig. 4.3). Furthermore, when people do seek out separate natural environments intentionally most use ones close to their homes (Neuvonen et al. 2007; White et al. 2013; Žlender and Ward Thompson 2017), and that the walking or other active travel between locations is also important (Wang et al. 2015; Zijlema et al. 2018). Informal green spaces, including vacant sites, are popular, close, and interesting spaces to walk and play (Brun et  al. 2018; Rupprecht et  al. 2015). Focusing design efforts where activity already occurs, and when, and how, rather than new sites to be activated is a way in which bottom-up initiatives can be supported and cultivated. Other examples emerge from studies into how elderly adults perceive and move in their everyday lives. For many this involves the need to have nature ‘right outside their door’, as visiting a park or traveling independently may not be an option. This could also be expressed through extending thresholds between indoor and outdoor with places to sit (Orr et  al. 2016) or making streets ‘dwelling spaces’ (Pellegrini and Baudry 2014). 4.3.2   Create or Cultivate Small Places en Route The efficacy of daily interactions with smaller pockets of nature on restoration and wellbeing is often overlooked in place of large parks and reserves. Integrating smaller, natural areas along regular pathways between home and everyday community, educational, employment, or retail destinations offers a significant way to increase the incidental and incremental exposure to, and interaction with, nature that provides a cumulative effect on mental health and wellbeing, as well as being effective ‘hot spots’ for biodiversity (Flies

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Fig. 4.3  Road reserve, Melbourne, Australia

et al. 2017). For example, increased biodiversity can be achieved through minimal strategic interventions to understory planting as Threlfall et  al. (2017) found in their study across 39 urban green spaces in Melbourne. Nordh and colleagues’ research on pocket parks (2009, 2011, 2013) has shown that the size of the park is less important to its ‘restoration potential’

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than the elements within it. These can also be temporary/pop up parks, which can be extremely effective in creating interest (Salvo et al. 2017). This spatial utility seems to suggest that people will actually walk further if there are multiple connected spaces, and if the pathways are interesting (Giles-Corti et al. 2005; Rioux et al. 2016), a similar effect to ‘thin parks’—edges or in-between spaces (Kullmann 2011)—and brownfield sites (Mathey et al. 2018). In a study comparing walking routes in Paris, those in a multi-pocket park neighborhood traversed “more unique segments, more unique green segments, and more loops or different routes out and back” (Rioux et al. 2016, p. 179). These findings indicated the creativity and exploration evoked with more frequent, diverse, and connected opportunities for nature interaction, and potentially encouraging a long-term interest in walking overall. This suggests that smaller, frequent parks can be connected by pathways that are also spaces of nature experiences and become daily routines (Church 2018). Paths then take on an additional layer: not only are they functional, but they cease being places in-between destinations, and allow nature to continuously connect through the streets (Fig. 4.4). Connecting small natural spaces also creates predictable opportunities for rest, which can be important for those  with mobility difficulties— such as the elderly for whom seats are cited as preferred both at destinations and along the way (Alves et al. 2008), or a pause on their journey (Peschardt et  al. 2012), or as ‘sensory nooks’. These interventions, including seating and unobstructed access, can also be strategically placed, rather than implemented throughout an area (Jorgensen and Anthopoulou 2007). Finally, natural areas integrated into a neighborhood—such as paths, front yards, and parks—can allow “spontaneous and informal gathering spaces” and “visceral sensory experiences” that can connect new migrants to a different environment (Hordyk et  al. 2015, p. 80). Certain spatial arrangements and the number of people they facilitate are important considerations. Corners, sheltered spaces, or clusters of trees also are locations that people seek out in public spaces and can create feelings of security and relaxation, and “provide an ‘anchor’ or edge for people to sit against” (Goličnik and Ward Thompson 2010, p. 48). This is crucial as dense vegetation is connected to women’s fear of visiting greenspaces (Sreetheran and van den Bosch 2014). Jorgensen et al. (2012) found that despite there being a substantial difference in ratings of safety between men and women when viewing various park scenes, dense understory was

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Fig. 4.4  Path, Berlin, Germany

considered safer when it was considered an edge feature (one side) rather than an enclosure on both sides. Furthermore, people can be uncomfortable sitting where there is perceived to be ‘no edge’, and “will not sit in the middle of a large, open patch of grass, presumably because there is no ‘edge’” (Goličnik and Ward Thompson 2010, p. 48). In Waitt and Knowbel’s study (2017)  of park users’ experiences in Wollongong one interviewee—“observing some people sitting on the grassy hill”—stated

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For me, it’s bare and open, exposed. It doesn’t even entice my senses. I’m not, what’s the word I’m looking for when you’re…. I’m not contained. I’m never comfortable. I like smaller spaces. I need to be enclosed. It doesn’t look safe. (p. 3163)

Spatially, this lends itself to smaller natural areas which  are defined and contained without the removal of isolation. For instance, a comfortable distance most people will sit from those they don’t know in a public space such as a park seems to be between 5 and 7 meters (Goličnik and Ward Thompson 2010, p. 44). A real-time experiment with EEGs observed that participants encountering other people as they walked through an urban area showed up as “intense cognitive function”, and “[t]he closer the encounter with passers-by, the more intense the impact” (Karandinou and Turner 2018, p. S62). A ‘just enough’ number of people mitigates feelings of isolation that may increase safety fears from having no one around (which in turn would restrict any restoration as the mind and body are hyper-vigilant), or the feelings of crowding and noise from too many people (or too many in close proximity) which can prevent full appreciation of a multisensory experience. 4.3.3  Let Urban Nature Be Wild ‘Wildness’ in urban areas is important as it often offers a more multisensory encounter with nature, an invitation of ‘escape’, and can an effective means by which to foster and protect authentic habitats and biodiversity in city areas. The first approach here is countering the idea that people don’t like wild or messier forms of vegetation. An appreciation of more diverse, less maintained, vegetation in  local neighborhoods has been found in numerous studies (Lindemann-Matthies et al. 2010; Lindemann-Matthies and Marty 2013; Twedt et al. 2016), such as natural grasslands or meadows (Garbuzov et al. 2015; Hoyle et al. 2017b; Jiang and Yuan 2017) (Fig. 4.5). Allowing or cultivating vegetation to grow along hard infrastructure is also met with high approval, such as greening tram tracks (Sikorski et al. 2018). Furthermore, there seem to be some common preferences for a more ‘natural’ nature, despite cultural or age differences (Fischer et  al. 2018; Wen et  al. 2018); however, there can also be specific regional ­associations that present—for instance, in Australia “venomous snakes, prickly plants and blinding sun” contribute to the inhospitable image of nature (Sack 2015, p. 66). Therefore, the shift here is not to attempt to

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Fig. 4.5  Grasses, Zurich, Switzerland

superimpose, wholesale,  a ‘wilderness’ landscape separate from humans, but indeed to specifically acknowledge and amplify the hybridity of the urban and natural. Some (minimal) maintenance of even the ‘wildest’ of locations can be beneficial, can lead to a reduced fear of crime (De Biasi 2017), and not be seen as neglected (Sikorski et al. 2018). In the case of naturally occurring, or spontaneous, vegetation, interventions seem counter-­intuitive but can also disrupt any duality that casts ‘wild’ as completely free of human interaction (Pellegrini and Baudry 2014). Secondly, a simple intervention can be to reduce the frequency of mowing in some of the grassland areas where short cut grass/lawn predominates, significantly affecting plant diversity (Chollet et  al. 2018) and creating a more natural habitat for bees (Threlfall et al. 2015; Yang et al. 2019). Even slowing the  rate of mowing residential lawns to every three weeks—the “‘lazy lawnmower’ approach” (Lerman et al. 2018, p. 167)—can have a dramatic effect on flowering and bee populations (Lerman et  al. 2018). Homogenization of lawn species, in conjunction with fertilizers and frequent

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mowing, prevents the seed propagation and flowering native weeds required for lawns to contribute to the urban ecosystem (Aronson et al. 2017). While “large, concentrated monospecific pollen sources” (Cariñanos and CasaresPorcel 2011, p. 212) can exacerbate allergies, as found in studies of vacant lots with ragweed in Detroit (Katz and Carey 2014), careful interventions can counteract this. Specifically, and beneficially, increasing biodiversity can decrease pollen by up to 30% (Cariñanos and Casares-Porcel 2011, p. 212), both in species heterogeneity and planting composition and density (Lõhmus and Balbus 2015). Other strategies include  introducing insect-pollinated trees and plants (rather than wind pollination), and those with shorter pollen cycles, and attention to micro climates such as by increasing blue infrastructure to increase humidity and lead to faster depositing of pollen (Carinanos et al. 2017). Finally, overall actions to reduce general air pollution can reduce the risk of urban residents developing or amplifying allergies (Lõhmus and Balbus 2015). Decreasing the frequency mowing of grassed areas then promotes the growth and appreciation of wildflowers (Garbuzov et al. 2015). This ‘alternative lawn’ of flowers (Ignatieva 2017), considered a “win-win” (Bretzel et  al. 2016), connects aesthetics and biodiversity (Bretzel et  al. 2016; Hands and Brown 2002; Jiang and Yuan 2017; Southon et al. 2017; Todorova et  al. 2004). Indeed, allowing or cultivating more than 27% of flower cover “generates the ‘wow factor’” (Hoyle et al. 2017a, p. 122). An increase in animals, in turn, offers an important element of connection to individuals that provides unexpected moments of delight—and sometimes confrontation—which create an embodied sense of experience in nature. As one interviewee stated in Waitt et al.’s study (2009): “It’s wildlife. It would be pretty boring walking through and just seeing grass and the odd tree…” (p. 50). Despite their relational meanings (Ratcliffe et  al. 2016), birds especially seem to be significant connectors between residents, increased biodiversity and interaction with nature (Belaire et al. 2015; Cox and Gaston 2015; Schebella et al. 2017). Nature sounds are important here as well (Marry and Defrance 2013; Nordh and Østby 2013) in allowing or encouraging the complexity of the environment such as contrast, amount, and use of spaces (Cassarino and Setti 2016) ­suggesting that being in nature is more of an ‘active sensory engagement’ rather than ‘passive recreation’. This broadens the scope of interacting with nature to one of an embodied and immersive experience. The use of vegetation for noise reduction and absorption (Fowler 2013; Sakieh et al. 2017) is also useful. As sound and noise perceptions are relational and contextual (Jennings and Cain

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2013) and highly contingent on visual qualities, such as window views of nature (Van Renterghem 2019), these should be used as ways in which we can create natural spaces that proactively design our sonic environments, rather than retrofit or mitigate for noise (Aletta et al. 2016; Jasper 2018; Kang et al. 2016). Indeed, the stillness that is associated with ‘quiet’ might actually be to do with a pause in the everyday movement of life, rather than an elimination of sound (Waitt and Knobel 2017). Water should also be a key feature of urban areas. Trends towards the regeneration of stormwater drains into living streams are growing in popularity as they are beneficial for restoration of habitats, water harvesting, and  addressing water pollution, and are  viewed favorably by residents (Asakawa et al. 2004; Kenwick et al. 2009). Creating or allowing spaces for moving water (whether through natural stream topography and orientation, or interventions such as pumps or fountains) not only provides an opportunity to have a multisensory engagement with nature, but also serves the purpose of preventing the breeding of disease-carrying mosquitos (Lõhmus and Balbus 2015, p. 5). For mental health, the invitation to engage with wetlands, canals, or streams through urban areas offers moments of escape as well as haptic engagement through the body. Encouragement of touch and sensation should be part of this interaction, such as opportunities to put toes in water during a lunch break. Water also creates habitats that are quite different from parks or other greenspaces, providing space for reintroduction (or allowing) of frogs, insects, and birds. For instance, in one study 90% of participants commented on dragonflies as of particular interest in appreciating London ponds (Ngiam et al. 2017). 4.3.4  Rethink Mobility and Movement Mobility and movement are often couched in problematic design and planning measures of ‘walkability’: assuming that “walking distance, walking time, or walking mode choice” are determining elements in pedestrian choice (Kim et al. 2014, p. 11) which can overlook the experience of i­ ndividuals in making those journeys. Furthermore “[w]e need to avoid ‘romanticising’ walking” (Gatrell 2013, p. 104) as illness, age, disorientation, traffic, pollution, or clothing ill-suited to the weather can all impact this kind of movement (p. 104). Research shows that people predominantly visit parks to rest or walk (Chiesura 2004; Stigsdotter and Grahn 2011; Veitch et  al. 2015; White et al. 2013), with playgrounds and playing fields often considered least restorative. Quality of natural spaces motivates usage (Calogiuri and Chroni

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2014; Calogiuri and Elliott 2017); elements “that elicit a sense of freedom or delight that calls people out into the landscape” (Ward Thompson 2013, p. 92). Interesting and diverse topography can be one such enticement (A. Jorgensen and Tylecote 2007), as “incessant variations in texture, gradients, curvature, surfaces, ledges and barriers … solicits the whole individual in each stride” (Araújo et al. 2019, p. 143). The ‘bodyground interaction’ is crucial; “how the grain, consistency and shape of terrain can work with kinaesthetic, proprioceptive and vestibular sensations to incite energetic movement outdoors” (Brown 2017, p. 312) further supporting the ‘enrichment’ of environments to foster neural plasticity. In other words, the surfaces you walk and move on matter (Forsyth et  al. 2013) far more than being functional enough to get from A to B. This includes people with sight impairment—contrary perhaps to assumptions about smooth surfaces—as it can offer a variety of sensory experiences as they move through diverse terrain (Bell 2019, p. 314; as one study interviewee stated, To be quite honest, most sight impaired people are completely bored by the sensory garden … People have a go at playing with it but it very often isn’t particularly sensorially rich. You know, people think, oh you fill it with plants which have got lots of movement, so that the air moving through them provides lots of sounds, and lots of different textures and smells, and so on. But to some extent, once you’ve been in it, you’ve been in it. It’s being able to move that I think is most enriching, and being able to move safely. (Bell 2019, p. 314)

To this end, designing for access and engagement with urban natural environments means making diverse mobilities and sensory perceptions the norm, rather than the exception. Movement can be “an intensely embodied and emotional experience” as well as an emboldening one (Andrews et  al. 2012, pp.  1928–1929). Design that allows for diversity of pace is vital—which is temporally dependent, for instance, on episodes of anxiety, chronic pain, traveling with children, temporary injury, or fatigue. In interviews with visually impaired people making their way around a busy and crowded London, the participants’ experiences demonstrated issues with “slowness, collision, unpredictability, tension or pain” (Middleton and Byles 2019, p. 76). An embracing of slow movement would support urban design’s overarching preoccupations with encouraging spaces of lingering.

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These ideas of walkability, based on an individual’s ability to walk on ‘autopilot’ with the flow of their movement uninterrupted (Middleton 2011), overlook some of these mobile complexities, and privilege “the attentive and agile walker” (Kärrholm et al. 2017, p. 31). For example, ‘shared space’ is a much-used and embraced concept of multi-mode use of roads that relies on visual cues and engagement between users of the space, including drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, skaters, pram users, and those using wheelchairs, and has been criticized (Imrie 2012) for failing to consider those with temporary or long-term visibility impairments, or who may be distracted (Phillips et al. 2013). Fences and walls, for instance, can be perceived not as barriers but spaces for touch through textural features (Brown 2017), as guides, or to be appropriated to move in new ways, such as for children (Krishnamurthy 2019). Such actions are far more creative, responsive, and inclusive with regard to the diversity of experiences individuals might have, than typical ‘accessible’ measures that often address one mode of difference and neglect others. Strategies, such as those suggested by participants with visual impairments, can include: walking the same route repeatedly with a long cane, each time receiving less description or direction from a walking partner, gradually building sufficient familiarity with tactile/auditory landmarks en route to walk the route alone over time; or … memorising a detailed route description and testing out small sections of independently over time until confident enough to piece together the whole route within the hours of daylight. (Bell 2019, pp. 314–315)

Micro-elements such as footpath width, lighting, or barriers such as having to stop for traffic also impact on the walking experience (Bornioli et al. 2019; Kim et al. 2014) and attention to these to make movement interesting, through all senses, will do more to encourage interaction with nature via activity than thinking about efficiency or distance of paths. In a­ ttending to these diversities of embodied movement, in which potential for nature experience can be increased, we “maximise these opportunities for mobile freedoms” (Bell 2019, p.  314), which is  especially important for those who want to feel “being part of ‘ordinary life’” such as older adults (Orr et al. 2016, p. 12). In addition to a reconsideration of ‘normal mobility’, feeling vulnerable, or ‘hypervisible’ (Lobo 2015) can negate any otherwise positive aspects of proximity, amenities, or sensory elements of natural areas, as

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perceptions of threat are an  anathema to feeling relaxed, at ease, or calm. These cultural exclusionary elements or spaces, and those relating to parks for instance, can be ingrained and seemingly invisible to planners and designers (Byrne 2012). Safety, perceptions of threat, and real risk of danger, are significant determinants of movement through urban spaces for many women and those identifying as diverse and non-binary sexualities and genders (Beebeejaun 2016; Plane and Klodawsky 2013; Plyushteva 2018; Valentine 1989). Racial and ethnic marginalization is deeply embodied in feelings of freedom to move or be in certain spaces (Held 2015; Skinner and Masuda 2013); for instance, in Lobo’s (2014) ethnographic research in Darwin she noted the stares, humiliating remarks, threats and gestures of intimidation in public spaces such as beaches, parks, shopping centres, markets, city streets, bus stops and buses that stressed Aboriginal bodies, in particular. (p. 104)

In this regard, attention to design features at specific junctures (Johansson et al. 2016, p. 270) can attend to the situated and contextual experiences of ‘feeling safe’, and re-work commonly avoided areas. This can mean reducing isolating areas and hidden corners, but also using textures to signify movement, for example, as one study participant noted, the use of gravel paths to “hear somebody else coming” (Pálsdóttir et  al. 2018, p. 315). Attention to lighting is also important as it can affect feelings of ‘being seen’, as well as creating amplified contrast. The creation of Free to Be, a digital mapping tool established by Monash XYX Lab, partnering with Crowdspot and Plan International, to gather real-time data on where women and girls feel unsafe in their cities, has been a useful way to reveal the dissonance between safety (perceived and actual) and location (Plan International 2018). Co-design, to ascertain lived experience and effective interventions, is crucial as elements such as lighting alone are not enough to create a safe environment. 4.3.5  Create Space for Temporality and Flux There are many ways in which attention to the dynamic changes in nature can be fostered, lending itself to ‘temporal urban design’ (Matos Wunderlich 2013). Planting seasonal flowers, vegetation, and food is a significant way of fostering this sense of time or providing opportunities to notice these changes going through routine daily activities. These offer a larger perspective on life, and can prompt reflection, joy, and an awareness of the passage

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of time (Bell et  al. 2018, p. 14), all of which can enable positive mental health and connection. Urban agriculture—‘edible green infrastructure’ (Russo et al. 2017)—can also provide multiple opportunities to be part of the seasonal and cyclical planting and harvesting routine (Fig. 4.6). In addition to community and allotment gardens that are a feature of many cities, alternative typologies are ‘edible forest gardens’ (Stoltz and Schaffer 2018). These measures can be implemented at different scales; for example Urban Food Street™ in Buderim, Queensland, was a highly successful, community-initiated and driven adoption of verge-­ focused urban agriculture, through fruit trees, vegetable, and herb plantings. Founded by Caroline Kemp and Duncan McNaught at one stage it encompassed 200 households across eleven streets, and cultivated connection to nature and community through local food production and sharing (Urban Food Street™). Urban foraging is another novel way of engaging with wild nature (Robinson et al. 2018), and one of the few that can explicitly engage taste. For example, in study of two parks in Berlin 12% of users were engaged in some form of biodiversity interaction with predominantly ‘wild-growing species’; of these, 60% gathered plants for consumption such as salads and teas. 21% picked plants and flowers for decoration, and 17% took photos or participated in other plant identification (Palliwoda et al. 2017). In another study,

Fig. 4.6  Community garden, Perth, Australia

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having accessible planters growing herbs and vegetables allowed for “spontaneous harvesting”, as “[t]hey tasted and smelled the plants’ leaves, tasting baby leaves of salad or small carrots and radishes” (Pálsdóttir et  al. 2018, p. 317). This kind of interaction can also provide a direct source of local microbiota from personally picked food, and the engagement with soil, plants, and animals in the process. Due to the industrial activity that has occurred throughout modern cities (and not only in designated ‘industrial areas’) the potential risks of soil contamination must be tested for, especially given aesthetic landscaping and developing may mask these conditions. (Burkholder 2012; Erdem and Nassauer 2013). For example, heavy metal contamination can vary considerably depending on proximity to roads (Russo et al. 2017). Awareness of this can enable mitigation and appropriate choice of locations for planting. Providing spaces to interact with the fluctuations of weather could also foster nature interactions, especially encouraging lingering, slowness, and stillness, as “exposure to the elements requires time if we are to ‘absorb’ the sensory affect of rain, wind or sun-shine” (Rooney 2018, p.  180). Further, awareness of the embodied experiences of the weather—‘filling up’ on heat from the sun, enjoying crisp cold air, sensing gentle rain on skin, feeling disoriented by loud gusts of wind—means providing flexible pockets of spaces to soak up sun, take shelter, watch rain, or pause on a walk.

4.4   Conclusion It is not enough to have or incorporate ‘greenspace’ into designs: it must be a multisensory experience, which means a living ecosystem. If we are wondering how to get people out if their cars and into nature, or how to squeeze another activity into their already hectic lives, we need to make it incidental and everyday. We can make interaction more authentic, more meaningful; we can think laterally about the barriers to experiencing it in ways that might encourage more people to notice nature, spend time in it, savor it, and maybe linger longer in its sights, sounds, smells, touch, than otherwise might catch our  attention. Ultimately, such measures involve the relaxing of regulations around nature in cities, rather than design per se. This surrendering of some of the elements can allow a more honest, interesting, and immersive set of interactions between individuals and their natural environment. In doing so, cultivation of a connected, wild ecosystem that enhances both biodiversity and the mental health and

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wellbeing of its inhabitants can create a connection that helps individuals feel comfortable, safe, and restored in public spaces. These natural spaces can augment, if not replace, the diminishing private gardens and green spaces in our cities, and facilitate the kind of everyday, incidental, and incremental interaction with space that provides a sense of ownership, stewardship, and place.

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CHAPTER 5

Conclusions

Abstract  This chapter outlines key themes in this book: addressing mental health and wellbeing in cities (for all people) as a significant public health issue; the utility of scientific experimentation, methodologies, and data in urban design (and indeed all design disciplines); and the necessity of ecological and environmental science in approaching human health aims. Keywords  Cities • Mental health • Nature • Urban • Health

This book has offered an integrated and robust evidence-based framework which elucidates the significant overlaps in aims and research between multiple disciplines, in particular, urban design, urban ecology, and psychological health and medical sciences. It has done so with the intent of examining how the most recent scientific advancements have augmented the compelling research on the benefits of nature on mental health and wellbeing. It is a series of sign posts, attempting to make this work more directed, more informed, utilizing data that are compelling, exciting, and heartening in their findings. We can return again to the research questions guiding this text: In what specific ways can urban design use the science that supports the positive effects of nature on mental health? What might be required of us with regard to reconceptualizing ‘nature’ in order to © The Author(s) 2020 Z. Myers, Wildness and Wellbeing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-32-9923-8_5

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revisit these ideas in a more nuanced, agile way? How might we rethink the standard vernaculars of design and planning? Addressing all of these is a commitment to addressing mental health and wellbeing of all people in ways that are relational, embodied, and temporal, through a reimagining of urban nature in accessible pockets throughout our cities. Chapter 1 presented the rationale for needing to urgently turn our attention to how urban stressors, ecological degradation and climate change can be health-disabling for our mental health and wellbeing. In turn, the nexus between planning and design and health was explored, and its attention to connections between ‘nature’ and mental health. In discussing how access to nature spaces, existing ‘greenspace’, and the idea of nature itself as inherently and universally beneficial are all problematic, the relationship between mental health and place was established as relational and embodied. Urban ecology—with its hybridity, biodiversity potential, and adaptive qualities— offers a realistic, already occurring, and beneficial version of nature for our urban areas, as well as propelling the recent calls for a truly planetary ecology for environmental and human health. The desire to advance our knowledge of how cities affect human sensory, emotional, and cognitive health was then explored with the introduction of how neuroscience is contributing to a complementary perspective on these nature interactions. Finally, I set the scope for this book: that combining a land use approach focusing on leftover, in-between land and allowing ‘wild urban natures’, will be most equitable, accessible, and accumulative for providing opportunities for nature interactions that can foster mental health and wellbeing. Chapter 2 explored the current epidemiological and population-level studies on the benefits of nature with regard to distance, proportion, and time spent. It highlighted some of the existing issues with ideas of ‘greenspace’, both as a definition and as a typology for maximizing ecological and mental health outcomes, as well as addressing how romantic ideas of ‘unfettered’ or uninhabited wilderness are exclusionary. Here, the concept of wild urban natures was expanded and contextualized. Chapter 3 explored the diverse, relational, and embodied ways in which nature interactions are experienced, and how that has enabled opportunities beneficial for mental health and wellbeing. In doing so, this included briefly charting the stress responses in the body, before exploring the overlapping, multisensory interactions, current research findings, and neurobiological theories offering insights into how and why these interactions can occur. Chapter 4 applied these explorations to a central design proposition: that urban nature needs to be immediate, incidental, and incremental.

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Rather than offering a dose and spatial formula, or set of design indicators, however, I presented five key design principles, and their associated pragmatic strategies, which are low cost, low maintenance, ‘safe to fail’ design interventions that increase opportunities for experiences with nature, without requiring additional land or planning, and potentially decreasing maintenance costs of local greenspaces, as well as for health expenditure in general. Underlying these chapters is the argument that, firstly, mental health and wellbeing in cities is an urgent issue and that it is both worthy of, and can be assisted by, urban design consideration. Secondly, it has affirmed the utility of scientific experimentation, methodologies, and data in urban design, explicitly not as a way of standardizing design, or offering universal solutions, but in exploring more nuance and specificities as to how individuals experience spatial and sensory elements, especially in relation to health (Taylor and Hochuli 2014) and to embodied experience. This involves a renewed commitment to the individual diversities and resisting outdated assumptions regarding access and mobilities. As Bell states, If we are to support more inclusive opportunities to experience nature in its different forms, we need to give people the freedom to be, explore and move with(in) natures that resonate in the context of their everyday lives, regardless of their embodied needs and priorities i.e. the freedom to choose. (Bell 2019, p. 318)

Thirdly, it has asserted the inextricable connection between ecological and human health. Urban nature must be understood, and its health addressed, as far more than parks, and the recreational benefit of humans, or the sectioning off of contested ‘nature areas’ and should be promoted and encouraged throughout the city. In doing so, ‘nature’ is released from the expectation of inherently ‘positive’ by being, instead, authentic, offering real life and genuine encounters with wild(er) natures that can offer perspective and healing, rather than needing to provide an always soothing, universal outcome for every person, in every location, on every day. In her critical examination of the primacy of the aesthetic in nature, Saito (1998) argues that “if the beauty of an ecosystem determines the beauty of each of its members, the positive aesthetic value of each of its members is predetermined, rendering our actual experience of their colors, shapes, smells, textures, and movements irrelevant” (p. 104). To this end, ecological and environmental science must be a key element of human health aims, ideally connected at policy and governance

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levels, and those involved in planning and designing our cities must be part of that conversation—in allowing, organizing, and creating spatial and compositional diversity. Parks, especially large ones, in our urban areas are vital, but as people get busier and populations intensify and sprawl, we can’t risk our interactions with ‘nature’ being limited to select visits to a designated space at a set time. As designers, a focus on parks as greenspace can mean we fall into the trap of trying to make all parks be all things to all people—and failing. Additionally, in acknowledging how humans have altered our natural environments through urban settlement and growth, and if our impact on natural systems at this point in history is irrevocable, we have both a motivation and responsibility (van den Bosch and Nieuwenhuijsen 2017) to continue our interventions and conscious non-­ interventions—a form of “ecological citizenship” (Wolch 2009). Finally, this book has emphasized the significance and appreciation of un-built or in-between spaces in planning and design, and as sites for urban nature to flourish. These irregular, misshapen, neglected areas lend themselves to the sensory elements of nature that most elicit and prompt engagement and interaction from individuals: wild sites that are more likely to encompass the messy realities of urban nature (Fig. 5.1). Urban design’s focus is the holistic organization of, and—vitally—the relation-

Fig. 5.1  Street planters, Melbourne, Australia

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ship between, both built and non-built (non)form. This work challenges designers to be imaginative and at its best such spaces are invigorating in their multiplicity. ‘Wild urban spaces’ are domains of a loud cacophony of intersecting, dynamic, invisible sensory forces, mediated through social, cultural, and personal perceptions. Such work reimagines our cities; rather than view the places we ‘design’ as a vertical hierarchy of layers, upon which the physical remains the foundation, we can re-conceive these as multisensory, three-dimensional axes, contingent on each other. Attention to embodiment is also needed to reaffirm the visceral and the lived experience as priorities in design of our urban spaces. We can begin by allowing life and living in all its messy paradoxical complexities to inform the way we envisage and allow urban spaces to be created and grow; to notice “beauty and worth of the wildness that exists in the actual places we inhabit” (Alaimo 2016, p. 30) (Fig. 5.2). There are many simple (though not always easy) questions that people involved in the planning and design of urban spaces can ask themselves to encourage the expression of these principles. Do these spaces invite you to return regularly, perhaps through changing flowers or seasonal growth of vegetables and fruit? Do they allow you to walk past housing with a visible yard in front? Is there planting that conveys the passage of time? Is there space left flexible (both spatially and in usage) for multiple uses? Do these spaces consider diversity in a broader context than physical ability? Are there multiple routes through the suburb, away from traffic but not isolated? Is it protected from heat, wind, or even rain, or allow people to experience those elements at particular places? Is it far removed from residential areas in a segregated unobserved way? Is there regular interaction with other people? Is it isolated during the day/night, or in particular areas? Often one of the initial hurdles is convincing (local) government that residents will support any changes to vegetation growth or spatial use. To this end, the abundant research on preferences and appreciation for, for instance, ‘wilder’ aesthetics in their neighborhoods, can be extremely helpful, especially where a cultural norm such as lawn on verges or over whole parks has been predominant. There is also an increasing and wide-­ ranging amount of research into the economic benefits of nature (whether existing or reconstructed) on land values and house prices, which can be far more convincing in some instances than the mental health benefits. For instance, Polyakov et  al. (2017) found that the restoration of urban streams in Perth increased house values within a 200 meter radius of 4.7%, and wetland proximity and number also had a significant positive effect on

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Fig. 5.2  Urban orchard, Perth, Australia

house value in another study (Tapsuwan et al. 2009). Mekala et al. (2015) estimated that rehabilitation of a creek in Melbourne had the “potential public benefits of avoided health costs of about AU$75,049 per annum and potential private benefits of AU$3.9 million” (p.  1354). Trees on street verges can increase property prices by over AU$16,000 (Pandit

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et al. 2013). A case study in Greece found that people were willing to pay a ‘green tax’ for the increase in public parks near their homes (Latinopoulos et al. 2016). Although many of the strategies presented here are at a micro or neighborhood scale they often still require cooperation, policy, and funding from various levels of government, which may be more convinced by economic arguments in planning and design, than health objectives (Kent et al. 2017). Though these often seem insurmountable in even the most minor of changes, it is hoped that the emphasis on allowing small-scale interventions rather than implementing  them, might assist in softening potential resistance. Whether urban nature is cultivated for ecological or health reasons there can be fundamentally aligned outcomes. Policy and funding decisions could change radically if sectors of government responsible for health and environment were integrated, knowing the same actions could produce multiple synergistic results. Indeed, advocating for the importance of biodiverse areas as vital for human health may have the outcome of actually conserving and increasing the number of natural environments more than an appeal to environmental health alone (Buckley and Brough 2017; Dean et  al. 2019). Enhancing ecological health and allowing urban nature to thrive “is likely because someone, somewhere, cared enough to join with others in an effort to work around whatever barriers to green space expansion (e.g., from commercial, industrial developers) there might be” (Prescott and Logan 2018, p. 5). Jones (2007), in her research on liminal—awkward—spaces in the city, queries “who these awkward designers will be” (p. 75). It is my hope that many of us, both within and outside of design disciplines, become ‘awkward designers’, re-using, mending, and tending to these overlooked pockets prevalent in our neighborhoods as spaces in which humans and nature interact. Rather than manicured green spaces, the very ‘wildness’ that could grow could also multiply the opportunities and encounters that could occur. To this end, we need to accept and embrace the interdependencies of our health and environment, and provide solutions that we can action immediately, that affirm the intrinsic connections of people and planet to grasp and tackle the seriousness and vastness of the challenges that cities face. In doing so, it could come to be that by asserting our right to a mentally healthy city, one where we feel safe, live with meaning, and can concurrently stake our claim in an ecologically healthy city, we allow, encourage, and advocate for an urban nature that is more than picturesque

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landscapes or aesthetic ornamentation, or invisible systems. To be in nature means acknowledging and accepting  its complexity—and our own—in all of its glorious messiness, wildness, and sensory delight.

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Index

C Cities environmental challenges, 5, 14, 21, 48, 51, 149, 151 risks to mental health, 2, 5–7, 45, 117, 118, 145 N Nature biodiversity, 51, 53, 118, 124 experience, 15, 49, 147 urban ecology, 13, 48, 51, 56, 112, 145, 146 wild, 52, 53, 56, 93, 129 Neuroscience attention, 6 enrichment, 81, 126 imaging, 16, 18

haptic, 86, 90 movement, 21, 147 temporal, 17 visual, 80, 125 Stress allostatic load, 74 anxiety, 4–6, 11, 12, 21, 42, 43, 72, 74, 83, 84, 87, 115, 126 depression, 4–7, 11, 13, 21, 42, 45, 46, 72, 74, 75, 82, 83, 85, 87, 89 U Urban design greenspace, 11, 12, 56, 112, 130, 145, 147 informal space, 17, 56, 118 parks, 20, 22, 56 streets, 17, 20, 85, 113

S Sensory perception auditory, 80, 81

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