Why parks should be a key policy priority
They have healing powers, Roz Yazdanmehr writes.
By the time I turned 17, I had spent a couple of years battling night sweats, heart palpitations, insomnia, and a general sense of impending doom. I finally saw a psychiatrist, who said I had anxiety and gave me a long list of prescriptions.
I had heard stories from friends about developing dependencies on these drugs, and was generally adverse to medication, so I never went to pick them up. Instead, I found myself drawn to parks, spaces where a sense of calm would descend, and the verge of crisis that often afflicted me would retreat.
Parks have a long history backed by sound scientific evidence of having positive impacts on mental and physical health. Historically, public parks were developed when city planners and landscape architects became concerned about sedentary lifestyles and pushed leisure with nature contact as a primary component. Parks were called the “lungs of the city” by many early planners.
Today, politicians argue the need for healthy communities, but few support major shifts in funding for urban nature. Parks should be a policy priority for municipal and provincial governments and considered essential public services for their positive effects on physical and mental health.
A landmark report by the U.S. Surgeon General in 1996 found that those who engage in regular physical activity benefit from reduced risk of coronary heart disease, hypertension, colon cancer, obesity and other ailments. Proximity to local parks is a critical variable for participating in outdoor physical activities.
A RAND Corp. study found that Los Angeles residents who live near parks visit them and exercise more often than people who live greater distances from green spaces. Additionally, a group of studies reviewed in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine demonstrated that the creation of or enhanced access to places for physical activity combined with informational campaigns in the form of newspaper ads, direct mailings and advertisements in transit outlets, produced a 48-per-cent increase in the frequency of physical activity. Parks are one of the most commonly reported convenient places for improving physical health, especially when easily accessible.
Access to parks also has an observable effect on mental health. A study by Pennsylvania State University and one by Hull & Michael from Virginia Tech each demonstrates significant correlation between stress reduction and lowered blood pressure with the length of stay in visits to parks.
Trust for Public Land has found that residents in housing projects with views of trees or grass experience reduced mental fatigue and report feeling that their problems are less severe and of shorter duration than residents with no views of nature. Researchers have recently discovered that children with attention deficit disorder can better concentrate on school work and other tasks after taking part in activities in green settings, such as walking through or playing in a park.
The profound health benefits offered by parks result in a healthier population and lead to diminished health-care costs. A study by the University of B.C. and the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority found that Canada spends $8.4 billion annually on health care attributable to excess weight or physical inactivity. A study of the 24,000 adult residents who use San Jose’s parks and trails to engage in physical activity generate annual medical cost savings of US$28.3 million. These levels of savings mean that funds can be more efficiently allocated to underfunded areas of health care.
Medical professionals have begun utilizing the healing power of public green spaces. Horticultural therapy has evolved as a form of mental health treatment, based on the therapeutic effects of gardening. In Japan and South Korea, researchers have established a robust body of scientific literature on the health benefits of spending time under the canopy of a living forest. Now their research is helping to establish shinrin-yoku (“forest therapy”) throughout the world.
As the institutions responsible for community development, planning and public health care, it is time municipal and provincial governments catch up with what research has shown and make park enhancement and access a policy priority. These levels of government should engage in a process of multi-level governance, as they do on other issues of shared responsibility, to utilize the proven power of nature as doctor.