A public survey found 86% of people want more space for nature in the city. The city council is already taking steps to add green space and increase biodiversity, which should boost public wellbeing.
The reconstructed Greenfields Wetlands in Salisbury, Adelaide.
Ben Macmahon
Cities are starting to restore natural systems such as waterways, wetlands and bushland. But restoration on the scale these systems need to function properly calls for a rethink of urban planning.
Noting nature around you – it could be a glance outside, tending plants, or ‘green’ exercise – will improve your well-being, research shows. The coronavirus pandemic has made it even more important.
Our mental health benefits when nature is part of our neighbourhoods, as in this residential street in Fitzroy, Melbourne.
Melanie Thomson
It’s well-established that green spaces are good for our well-being. Now we can demonstrate that greater biodiversity boosts this benefit, as well as helping to sustain native plants and animals.
Children in the Willows forest nature program in the Humber Valley in west Toronto are drawn to water and sticks, simple materials for exploring and investigating. Here the children explore water accumulated from spring rains.
(Louise Zimanyi)
When parents walk in the forest with their children and us and see how children are drawn to spiral snails, together we see how connections with the land are critical for the Earth’s future.
Brisbane’s South Bank parkland isn’t exactly getting out in the wild, but experiences of urban nature are important for building people’s connection to all living things.
Anne Cleary
Moves to connect people with nature for both the conservation and health benefits point to the need for people to experience nature as they find it in the city, rather than only out in natural areas.
An impression of biodiversity sensitive urban design (BSUD) developed by the authors in collaboration with Mauro Baracco, Jonathan Ware and Catherine Horwill of RMIT’s School of Architecture and Design.
Australian cities are home to many threatened species but are also where biodiversity is being destroyed by development. But what if planning and design processes built nature into the urban fabric?
Noise pollution is usually associated with aeroplanes flying overhead, not happy children.
from shutterstock.com
If the nature we desire is, in fact, its expression as untamed wildness, then we should turn to the creativity of artists as well as urban designers when building our cities.
It’s now possible to experience virtual walks through nature – like this video, for example – but can that ever match the real thing?
Video screenshot, sounds from the core/YouTube
Faecal transplants and virtual nature are technological solutions to ‘nature deficit disorder’ from urban living. Such ‘quick fixes’ offer some benefits, but are no substitute for the real thing.
Generic plotting of ‘green space’ on an urban plan does not target mental wellbeing unless it is designed to engage us with the sights, sounds and smells of nature.
Zoe Myers
Successful parks and urban green spaces encourage us to linger, to rest, to walk for longer. That, in turn, provides the time to maximise the restorative mental benefits.
Early in the morning and late in the evening is when shorebirds escape disturbance on the beaches on which their survival depends.
Arnuchulo
We aren’t just jostling with each other for beach space. Scuttling, waddling, hopping or flying away from beachgoers all around Australia, wildlife struggles to survive the daily disturbances.
Greening Manhattan: bringing nature into the city is one thing, making it part of our culture and everyday lives is another.
Alyson Hurt/flickr
The rise of urban greening is an opportunity to recast the relationship between people and environment. Humans and non-human species are ecologically intertwined as inhabitants of cities.
Much of the ‘smart cities’ rhetoric is dominated by the economic, with little reference to the natural world and its plight.
Ase from www.shutterstock.com
The rhetoric of ‘smart cities’ is dominated by the economic, with little reference to the natural world and its plight. Truly smart and resilient cities need to be more in tune with the planet.
A park, in this case Hyde Park in Sydney, is one of the easiest and most accessible ways to engage with nature in the city.
Lucy Taylor
Nature is dispersed through our cities, even if we don’t notice it. And there’s abundant evidence that engaging with nature, even in urban settings, is good for us.
It looks great – but what about the wildlife?
Tree image from www.shutterstock.com.
Welcome to the CBD. Take a look at all the glass masonry and asphalt. The streets are canyons. Apart from a tree in the footpath, or a Peregrine Falcon way overhead, there’s little nature to be seen. Nature…