Nature-Based Urban Planning: A European Health Imperative?
By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will reside in urban areas, according to the United Nations. What will living in these new and expanded urban areas feel like? The next 30 years will determine the answer, but one thing is clear: Urban planning that provides access to natural spaces will be a crucial aspect of making these cities more liveable. Recent research by McGill University and L'Université dans la Nature explains why.
Published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, their 2022 study points to a health imperative for future urban dwellers. They studied the physiological and psychological states of those participating in a nature walk and found remarkable results.
Study participants strapped a sensor onto their finger that monitored body metrics such as electrodermal activity, skin temperature, and heart rate. Then they took off on a 120-minute guided walk through a forest in Quebec, where they were immersed in a series of sensory activities—from breathing exercises to walking barefoot in the forest.
Throughout all of the activities, the sensors indicated that participants’ autonomic nervous systems were fully engaged, and a decreasing average heart rate underscored the positive impact contact with nature had on their health and well-being. A psychological self-assessment backed up the sensor data, with results showing a boost in positive mood states and a decrease in negative mood states.
Photo Credit Alyssa Rose
These results underscore a growing body of evidence that our bodies and minds need nature to function well, and that without it we face real health consequences. A health impact assessment study conducted by research professor and leading expert Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, PhD, compared natural-cause mortality with exposure to green space in 980 European cities and concluded that a large number of premature deaths in European cities could be prevented by increasing exposure to green space.
According to the research, green spaces reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer, promote physical activity, and improve mental health and cognition.
“Only in the last few hundred years have we moved to cities where there is a lack of green space, and we’re not used to this.”
“As humans, we’ve been running around in the forest and savannah for tens of thousands of years,” Nieuwenhuijsen explains. “Only in the last few hundred years have we moved to cities where there is a lack of green space, and we’re not used to this. Concrete and squared spaces cause stress on the body and the brain.”
Stress on the brain is the focus area of landscape architect and neuroscience researcher Agnieszka Olszewska-Guizzo, PhD. Her research shows that green spaces boost brain wave activity associated with relaxation, mindfulness, and momentary mood improvement. “If we go to the green space feeling overwhelmed and disturbed it’s likely that we’ll leave the green space feeling less disturbed,” she says.
The good news for urban dwellers is that it doesn’t take much green space to have a positive effect—even a small garden plot can boost the nervous system.
Installing a garden behind her home made a huge impact for Luxembourg architect Türkan Dagli. “I had never touched earth before, but this connection to nature in the garden, it calmed me. When I have problems now, I go out there. I take five minutes off and come back more relaxed,” Dagli says.
Science backs up Dagli’s experience: A 2011 study found that just 30 minutes of gardening can decrease the stress hormone cortisol and restore positive mood.
Faced with this growing body of quantitative and qualitative data, decision-makers are tasked with finding ways to bring nature into the daily lives of urban dwellers. Here are some innovative solutions being tried and tested in Europe, where currently 75% of the population lives in an urban area:
Addressing “park deserts”
The World Health Organization recommends that green spaces should be accessible within a 300-meter distance of people’s homes. This spawned a new rule of thumb conceived by Dutch urban forester Cecil Konijnendijk called the 3-30-300 rule. It states that every citizen should see at least 3 trees from their home, have 30 percent tree cover in their neighbourhood, and not live more than 300m away from the nearest park or green space.
Illustration of the 3-30-300 rule - source
“This is really in line with research that shows how both ‘passive’ exposure and ‘active’ easy access to green spaces and trees have a positive effect on various aspects of health and wellbeing,” says Konijnendijk.
In Barcelona, Nieuwenhuijsen studied residents who met the 3-30-300 rule and found they had significantly better mental health, less medication use, and fewer psychologist or psychiatrist visits. Though only 4.7% of Barcelonans currently meet the green space rule, more space is being created for parks and gardens. At Plaza de les Glòries, a former roundabout in the city center, a 4.3 hectare park has been developed with 472 new trees and 9,078 square meters of greenery.
Parc de les Glòries - source
Nieuwenhuijsen says projects that reallocate road space to natural environments are exactly what cities need to be healthier. “Imagine if every space for a car was a tree—we would have a much better city.”
The revival of waterways and coastlines for public use, called blue space, can also bring similar benefits. “Canals are slowly coming back in many cities,” Nieuwenhuijsen says.
Prioritizing green architecture
One of the most foundational and important studies in this field was conducted by a researcher named Roger Ulrich in 1984. He studied patients in a Pennsylvania hospital recovering from surgery. Half were put in rooms with a window view of a natural setting. The others were put in a similar room, but with a window facing a brick wall. The patients who were able to look out on a natural scene had shorter hospital stays, received few negative evaluations, and needed less pain medication.
But the healing and relaxing nature of green architecture shouldn’t be visual alone, studies show. It should, ideally, involve all the senses. A 2013 study on birdsong found it positively impacted stress recovery and attention restoration, and improved negative mood states. The reasons for this, the study concluded, are based on our human nature and evolution. The presence of birdsong is associated with safety in the human brain for good reason—we learned over the course of thousands of years that when birds stop singing, there may be trouble ahead.
Leaders at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, one of the largest children’s hospitals in the UK, applied this scientific research. In a partnership with the Foundation for Creative Technology (FACT) the hospital played “Wild Song at Dawn”, produced by award-winning wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, in the hospital corridors and also in personal audio players. Young patients receiving injections and other treatments were calmed and de-stressed by the recordings, according to hospital staff.
A 2023 project in Luxembourg by Türkan Dagli’s architecture firm, Dagli+, applied the principles she learned from her gardening experience, creating residential housing that aimed to develop the relationship between humans and nature. They utilized the space where a penthouse typically goes to design a vegetated rooftop terrace where residents could grow vegetables or wildflowers.
Dagli+ roof terrace designs - source
Dagli says there are challenges to green architecture in urban areas—roads are bigger, the materials that architects can use are different. However, she believes that green design is possible in cities with a little creativity and willingness to adapt. Her firm uses their own certification called Green Passport. It standardizes the percentage of area which has grass and shrubs in order to ensure a truly green environment for future occupants.
“We have to get the human scale connected to the nature scale.”
Optimizing existing infrastructure
How cities use existing infrastructure will be key to nature-based urban planning efforts. Nieuwenhuijsen’s research has found that, though European cities have a historically built environment with few vacant parcels of land, there are several strategies that can be used to recover green spaces.
These include turning former industrial areas into urban parks, green roofs and vertical gardens. Nieuwenhuijsen says these types of projects are particularly relevant for the 40% of European cities whose populations are shrinking. For bigger cities that are trending even bigger, the question is about where and how to build housing.
The increasingly crucial role of transportation, another branch of Nieuwenhuijsen’s research, will need to be considered heavily. “Road space for cars takes up way too much space,” he says. “In Barcelona, only 1 out of 4 trips is by car, but 60% of public space is given to cars. That’s why many cities in Europe are trying to keep cars out with congestion charging, parking prices, or low emission zones for cleaner cars.”
Optimizing cities to allow for more green space — and better health for its people — means taking a holistic view of how the infrastructure works together. “Mobility, climate, equity issues—all of these things are connected, that’s why you start looking at the city more holistically,” Nieuwenhuijsen says.
Creating quality outdoor experiences
Though the evidence showing improvements gained from seeing nature are abundant, what the 2022 UdN and McGill study show clearly is that immersion in nature is what does the job best.
UdN developed the Nature (Re)Connection program with this aspect of immersion in mind, offering an exploration of the forest with many of the same sensory exercises used in the 2022 study. The aim is to provide participants with simple tools that can help them benefit from nature’s impact on their physical, psychological and cognitive health throughout their lives.
The program is currently offered by guides in Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Italy, and Quebec.
“What we do basically is give people the space, time, and opportunity to explore the nature around them through their senses, while explaining to them what research says is happening in their bodies,” explains Julie Schadeck, a Certified Nature (Re)Connection Guide and General Coordinator of UdN. “Taking a moment to listen, to touch, to smell—we don’t really do anymore that when we go into the forest. But a lot of times, it’s these simple things that people go seek afterwards. They stand still for a moment and listen. They pick a tree to sit by for a while. They take their students for a walk through the nearby park if they need to have a tougher conversation with them.”
Indeed, if adults learn how to optimize contact with nature, they can pass that down to children—who will be the most impacted over the long term by the urbanization of the world’s cities. Many studies point to the educational and developmental benefits of regular contact with nature—and the consequences for children who don’t get enough of it.
A 2019 study of children in Denmark found that those who experienced the lowest level of green space during childhood were 55% more likely to develop a psychiatric disorder later in life—even after adjusting for factors such as socio-economics and a parental history of mental illness.
The study evaluated possible reasons for this link, and concluded that green space offers important psychological restoration, especially for children growing up in stressful urban environments. It also encourages exercise, improves social coherence, and decreases noise and air pollution that can affect brain development.
While passive appreciation of green space may be enough for younger children, science shows that pathways related to use are needed as children age and become more independent. Therefore, green space around children’s schools becomes increasingly important with age.
A program in Flanders to redesign school playgrounds to be greener and provide more nature-based play opportunities resulted not only in greater usage of the space, but improved social behavior.
But what if the school itself, and its curriculum, was nature-based? That’s the reality being pioneered at the International School of Luxembourg. The preschool through Grade 12 international school located in Luxembourg City worked with outdoor education researcher Gail Keech to launch a Nature Based Learning (NBL) pilot program in 2022. Keech says the NBL program “highlighted that there is a gap in our support system at school and that Nature Based Learning can fill that gap for a diverse range of students.” It has since expanded into a whole-school approach developed to support NBL across the curriculum.
Part of the pilot included the publication of a research paper which explored the impact of the program on its students, ages 10-14. For one Friday each week, the students were taken to natural environments within an hour’s drive of the school where they were afforded the space to roam and explore.
A combination of observation, discussion, and self-report questionnaire provided insight into the engagement and enjoyment of the students’ experience.
The results of the study were overwhelmingly clear, says Keech. “We observed a wide-range of benefits: Joy, well-being, confidence, risk-taking, hands-on learning, curiosity, calm, and learning engagement were all enhanced.”
Word art of students’ self-reported emotions during NBL program - source
The continuation of the program has yielded similar benefits for a wider group of children. Keech recounts the story of one six-year-old boy who had trouble learning in the classroom and was getting into fights at school. “One day, he experimented with throwing rocks in the river, and observed how they made different sounds depending on their size and the depth of the water. I realized this student didn’t have learning difficulties, he had difficulties learning in the classroom environment,” says Keech, adding, “He hasn’t had any fights this year.”
These learning moments in nature can also be shared between children and parents, and Keech says it doesn’t even require access to a formal outdoor program. “Kids don’t need to be entertained in nature. They don’t need big exciting paid-for events.”
What does Keech say parents need to get started? A patch of grass and a single question, “Can we find any creatures in here?”
Conclusion
Cities of the future will be home to an exponentially explosive number of people around the world, and urban planners will need to think on their feet to make these spaces liveable.
“For Europeans (and non-Europeans) who live in cities, it’s very important to find ways to care about one's mental health by regularly and quite literally slowing down the brainwaves that become strained with fast-paced city life,” says Olszewska-Guizzo.
“Policy makers should see trees and green space as an essential part of urban infrastructure and public service.”
For these researchers, the data is clear. Now it's a matter of connecting the dots between research and policy. “Policy makers should see trees and green space as an essential part of urban infrastructure and public service,” says Konijnendijk.
The trick to achieving this, according to Olszewska-Guizzo, may be finding a more tangible way for organizations, governments, and societies to interpret these positive impacts. “I believe that if the value of green spaces for mental health and well-being is properly acknowledged and translated into monetary value, decision makers would think twice before selling another plot for investment,” she says. “To me, this is just a question of time before we collectively realise how valuable green spaces are.”
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Johanna Sorrentino is a writer and content strategist specializing in health, science, and education. You can read more of her work and connect with her on LinkedIn.