Landscape Architecture Resource

Here is a recent newspaper article about some research being done on the effects of urban environments on people's mental processes.

Now scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control.

I would be interested in reading the original academic paper on this one. I'd also have to see downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan. Is it a good control for "urban environment"? Walking through Times Square, NYC definitely made my head spin. But life in the core of downtown Toronto feels like a walk in the park by comparison.

I definitely agree that there is something in a natural setting that is necessary for a healthy life. As a Landscape Architect, of course, I've bet my life on that idea, and have always felt it to be intrinsically true in my experience.

The challenge today is to find ways to integrate "natural" settings into our daily lives. As I've noted in some of my earliest posts, the author continues:

This research arrives just as humans cross an important milestone: For the first time in history, the majority of people reside in cities. For a species that evolved to live in small, primate tribes on the African savannah, such a migration marks a dramatic shift.

This is exactly the kind of research that we could use more of. Landscape Architecture could use more firm scientific work to hold our constellation of theories in more effective and empirically proven light. This is the kind of statistics-driven proof that I could use on a regular basis to wave in front of city officials and civil engineers to say, "No, actually, the large healthy trees are more important than how cheaply we can install water mains here."

Some of the article gets a bit airy, or perhaps deterministic:

As a result, it's less able to exert self-control, which means we're more likely to splurge on the latte and those shoes we don't really need.

As if one could purchase shoes in the forest that is romanticized earlier in the article.

The conclusion of the article reads almost like a definition of the profession of landscape architecture:

The key, then, is to find ways to mitigate the psychological damage of the metropolis while still preserving its unique benefits. Kuo, for instance, describes herself as "not a nature person," but has learned to seek out more natural settings: The woods have become a kind of medicine. As a result, she's better able to cope with the stresses of city life, while still enjoying its many pleasures and benefits. Because there always comes a time, as Lou Reed once sang, when a person wants to say: "I'm sick of the trees/take me to the city."