Touting green space advantages

Incorporating green spaces into built environments can improve learning effectiveness and work productivity, and help alleviate mental stress and illness. Green space and natural settings help overcome fatigue by relaxing and restoring the mind. In urban and built environments green spaces are settings for cognitive respite, as they encourage social interaction and de-stressing through exercise or conversation, and provide calming settings.

Here are some highlights of research from the University of Washington, College of the Environment.

* The experience of nature helps to restore the mind from the mental fatigue of work or studies, improving productivity and creativity.
 

* Contact with nature helps children to develop cognitive, emotional, and behavioral connections to nearby social and biophysical environments and is important for encouraging imagination and creativity, cognitive and intellectual development, and social relationships

* Symptoms of ADD in children can be reduced through activity in green settings, thus “green time” can act as an effective supplement to traditional medicinal and behavioral treatments

* Outdoor activities can help alleviate symptoms of Alzheimers, dementia, stress, and depression and improve cognitive function in those recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

* Exercise improves cognitive function, learning, and memory.

* Green spaces provide necessary places and opportunities for physical activity.

* Urban nature, when provided as parks and walkways and incorporated into building design, provides calming and inspiring environments and encourages learning, inquisitiveness, and alertness.

See the rest of the research here: http://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_Mental.html?goback=%2Egde_1008567_member_173515484