Small-Scale Urban Greening

Creating Places of Health, Creativity, and Ecological Sustainability

Angela Loder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317284253
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Small-scale urban greening projects are changing the urban landscape, shifting our experience and understanding of greenspaces in our cities. This book argues that including power dynamics, symbolism, and aesthetics in our understanding of the human relationship to urban nature can help us create places that nurture ecological and human health and promote successful and equitable urban communities. Using an interdisciplinary approach to current research debates and new comparative case studies on community perceptions of these urban greening projects and policies, this book explores how small-scale urban greening projects can impact our sense of place, health, creativity, and concentration while also being part of a successful urban greening program. Arguing that wildness, emotion, and sense of place are key components of our human–nature relationship, this book will be of interest to designers, academics, and policy makers.

1

Nature, health, well-being, and sense of place

What do we know? What don’t we agree on?

While popular consensus has generally viewed urban nature (especially in the form of parks and gardens) as beneficial, up until fairly recently it remained relegated to the mainly ornamental category, and thus subject to budget cuts when competing with other priorities. Recently, however, research on the benefits of nature has been spilling out of academic journals and into popular media and governmental policies, thus giving urban nature an unprecedented popularity and legitimacy. The research of interest ranges from discussions on the nature deficit disorder in children (Louv 2006, 2011), to trends giving ‘nature prescriptions’ to improve health (Hunter, Reuben et al. 2012; Jiang, Chang et al. 2014), to the need for ecosystem services – traditionally focused on how nature can help city infrastructure and now inclusive of how it can help human health and well-being (Millennial Ecosystem Assessment 2003; Young 2010; Gómez-Baggethun and Barton 2013; Wu 2013). This shift in perspective on urban nature from an ornamental extra (nice to have but not essential) to a key component in urban planning and public health is largely due to the influence over the last 30 years of select research programs on public policy.

These research programs have provided vast amounts of empirical data to support the now well-established observation that access to nature has benefits for human health and well-being (van den Berg, Jorgensen et al. 2014; Lee, Williams et al. 2015; Honold, Lakes et al. 2016; Wyles, White et al. 2019). However, while this research has played a central role in the development of policy, it represents only part of the vast and diverse field of inquiry on the human relationship to nature. Furthermore, these research programs – most often, but not exclusively, from environmental psychology – have been unable to explain conflicts surrounding some urban nature initiatives (Gobster 2000; Palardy, Boley et al. 2018a), apathy from certain populations on actual use of urban greenspace (Hitchings 2013; Boyd, White et al. 2018), or conflicting aesthetic preferences (Schirpke, Altzinger et al. 2019). This means that not only are urban greening projects potentially missing key insights that may make them more successful, but also that it is difficult to see where gaps, conflicts, or potential synergies exist in order to create more successful urban greening projects.

To begin to address these gaps and tensions, as well as suggest where we may find these synergies, this chapter provides an overview and discussion of what we currently know about the relationship between nature, health, and well-being; key debates and conflicts in current research; and new areas of inquiry that hold promise for small-scale urban greening and public health. Some of the key questions I ask include: “What do we know already?”, “What don’t we agree on?”, and “Why does it matter how we measure and understand the human relationship to nature, health, and well-being?” Throughout this review I argue that the gaps and conflicts between research programs stem from key differences in the paradigms that underlie them, and that these paradigms are not only of academic interest; rather, they can have real-world influence on how small-scale urban greening projects are conceived, created, and received. Specifically, the biggest tension centres on whether or not research programs use a biological or utilitarian (Williams and Patterson 2008) versus a relational and socially constructed approach or paradigm (Flint, Kunze et al. 2013; Kolinjivadi, Van Hecken et al. 2019) to two key questions: ‘What is nature?’ and ‘What is the human relationship to nature?’ Furthermore, the terminology used to describe perceptions, images, or valuations of nature itself often overlap with research on the human relationship to nature, making distinctions somewhat arbitrary (Flint, Kunze et al. 2013). This semantic imprecision makes it difficult to understand where the gaps and conflicts exist. Nevertheless, insights from sense-of-place research – which, like that on nature, is also informed by multiple research traditions (Williams and Patterson 2008) – is helpful in understanding how different underlying paradigms in human–nature research traditions impact their methods, research questions, and even their understanding of nature itself. Though there are significant differences between biological and utility paradigms, and between relational and social constructionist paradigms, they are informed by similar underlying worldviews, and thus are grouped together (see Figure 1.1).

In reviewing current research and debates that try to answer these questions, I show that research paradigms based on a biological or utilitarian definition of nature – while more easily adapted into ecological services models and planning policy – tend to miss the cultural, social, political, and economic influences that shape access to, values around, and perceptions of urban greening projects, health and well-being, and sense of place. These socio-cultural factors in the human relationship to nature, as will be seen in the following chapters, may in fact be key to creating small-scale urban greening (SSUG) projects that promote health, creativity, and ecological sustainability. Understanding these differences and gaps thus provides a foundation from which to examine the case studies and new research on small-scale urban greening examined in the rest of the book. The chapter finishes with an examination of new areas of inquiry that offer promising insights that can also be applied to the case studies in subsequent chapters.

Figure 1.1 Paradigms in nature-human relationship research programs.

Examining different research programs that look at the human relationship to nature is further complicated by the wide range and scale of research (Flint, Kunze et al. 2013). For example, influential research ranges from discourse analysis of historical, economic, and cultural valuations of nature (Nash 1982; Cronon 1995; Smith 1996; Huber 2018; Schirpke, Altzinger et al. 2019), to more empirically oriented social science investigations that focus on individual perspectives and reactions (Ulrich 1986; Kaplan and Kaplan 2005; Korpela, Ylen et al. 2009; Hazer, Formica et al. 2018), to investigations of values, attitudes, and behaviours (Gagnon Thompson and Barton 1994; Schultz and Zelezny 1999; Dunlap, Van Liere et al. 2000; Schultz, Shriver et al. 2004; Colléony, White et al. 2019). Some research examines how nature influences human health and well-being (Ward Thompson, Roe et al. 2013; Houlden, Weich et al. 2018; Kim and Jin 2018), while some ignores this aspect entirely (Dunlap, Van Liere et al. 2000; Ekers and Loftus 2013; Lorimer, Hodgetts et al. 2019).

Biological paradigm: adaptive and utility

What is nature?

Both the adaptive and utility paradigms have been immensely influential in public policy and in shaping discussions about what nature is and how we relate to it. Nature is seen as a relatively constant, stable entity that does not need explaining or deconstructing: it just is. This is closely aligned with the popular perception of nature as a given (Williams 1976; Nelson 1996) and echoes classic Anglo-American representations of nature. This idea of nature mostly follows the popular assumption of wilderness as “pure” or “strong” nature (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989; Kuo 2001; Kowarik 2013; Corliss 2019) against which all other forms of nature can be seen as a weaker imitation, and the goal of much of this research has been to show that urban (or ‘weaker’ nature) also has value and benefits. For instance, Kuo – one of the original researchers on this topic – writes:

Moreover, the empirical literature suggests that the rejuvenating effect of nature extends to far less “pure” forms of nature than wilderness and that it results in systematically greater effectiveness on a wide variety of tasks. Thus … the availability of even relatively weak forms of nature could enhance residents’ effectiveness in the tasks they face.

(Kuo 2001)

For the most part, as nature is a stable construct, researchers following a biological or adaptive paradigm use a wide variety of what counts as the nature variable in their studies: viewing nature from a window (Kaplan 1993; Tennessen and Cimprich 1995; Kaplan 2001; Olszewska-Guizzo, Escoffier et al. 2018; Wang, Kuo et al. 2019), plants in the workplace (Lohr, Pearson-Mims et al. 1996; Larsen, Adams et al. 1998; Shibata and Suzuki 2002; Lee, Williams et al. 2015; Adamson and Thatcher 2019), partaking in active “nature” experiences, such as gardening (Cimprich 1993; Armstrong 2000; Ossola, Locke et al. 2019), walks through urban parks (Hull and Michael 1995; Herzog, Chen et al. 2002; Li, Deal et al. 2018; Ayala-Azcárraga, Diaz et al. 2019), and even wilderness excursions (Kaplan 1984; Hartig, Mang et al. 1991; Meyer, Rathmann et al. 2019). This wide variety of what counts as “nature” in the studies has been seen as positive proof of the strength of the human-nature relationship and shaped over 30 years of research: “The diversity of methodologies employed in these studies (on nature) makes the persistence of positive findings particularly compelling … (e.g., naturalness of setting, frequency of contact with nature, total time spent in nature)” (Kuo 2001). Positing that even popularly viewed “weak” forms of nature give health benefits supports the urban greening activism of many of the researchers in this paradigm to portray urban or nearby nature as valuable (Kaplan 1983; Kuo, Bacaicoa et al. 1998; Kaplan 2001; Sugiyama, Carver et al. 2018) and to understand which types of nature give which type of benefit.

The adaptive paradigm: nature as opportunity for survival

One of the dominant paradigms in the study of the human experience of the environment is what Williams and Patterson (2008) refer to as the adaptive paradigm, which is grounded in the assumptions that biological survival motivates psychological and physiological responses to the environment, and that certain environments are better suited to human health and well-being than others (Williams 2008). The most common research programs originating from this paradigm revolve around questions of (1) human adaptive responses to certain environments or features that are restorative to human cognitive fatigue and overall well-being, or (2) recovery from stressful environments and improved positive mood. The bulk of research over the last 30 years has focused on so-called restorative environments, testing either Stephen and Rachel Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory (ART) (Kaplan 1995; Kaplan and Kaplan 2005; Wyles, White et al. 2019) or Roger Ulrich’s Psychophysiological Stress Reduction Theory (PSR) (Ulrich 1993; Tyrväinen, Ojala et al. 2014). Both theories are explicit in their drawing on an adaptive paradigm, though they differ in their explanation. ART draws on William James’ (1892) theory of directed attention, which argues for the importance of sustained attention for adequate human functioning. The Kaplans argue that nature (which follows popular perceptions of nature described above) possesses the attributes necessary to hold our attention involuntarily (or without effort) and to be experienced as relaxing. This aspect, they argue, reduces attentional or cognitive fatigue (Kaplan 1995). Specifically, according to the ART model, nature possesses four attributes that make it particularly restorative: fascination, mystery, coherence, and the feeling of ‘being away’ from our everyday lives (Hartig, Mang et al. 1991; Hauru, Lehvävirta et al. 2012).

Though qualitative methods are used in this restorative environments approach (Korpela, Ylen et al. 2008; Brown, Rhodes et al. 2018), and the initial research included qualitative methods (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989), the vast majority of research programs testing the ART use a dose–response model, looking for linkages between specific environmental features or stimuli and psychological functioning or well-being (Williams and Patterson 2008; Hazer, Formica et al. 2018). Most often, this involves using standardized psychological tests and scales and measures of cognitive fatigue or potential restoration in response to various images of natural scenes, or after walks in parks, etc. The PSR model also draws on an evolutionary biology theory, which argues that because humans evolved (and have spent most of their time) in natural settings, they are uniquely adapted to respond to natural stimuli, either through biophilia (love of nature), or biophobia (innate fear of nature, such as snakes) (Ulrich 1993; von Lindern, Bauer et al. 2013). Most of the research testing the PSR theory has used a combination of physiological (such as monitoring of heart rate and cortisol levels (Tsunetsugu, Lee et al. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Urbanites, nature, and re-thinking urban greenspace
• Chapter 1: Nature, health, well-being, and sense of place: What do we know? What don’t we agree on?
• Chapter 2: Ecology in the margins: green infrastructure and stormwater management
• Chapter 3: Meadows in the sky: a green roof case study
• Chapter 4: Reclaiming the city: vacant lots and post-industrial corridors
• Conclusion: Policy lessons and research implications: connecting urbanites to nature and re-thinking urban greenspace
• Index