Greening the City

Well-being and health

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How to fight stress naturally

Does the presence of nature in the urban environment have an effect on the health of the public? This is a question that scientists have been investigating for several years.
One of the pioneering studies in this field was published in 1984 in the highly prestigious journal Science. The US researcher Roger Ulrich showed that patients who had undergone gallbladder surgery recovered more quickly when they were in a hospital ward with a view of a natural landscape than if they could only see a brick wall. The former needed fewer painkillers than the latter, and on average were able to leave hospital a day earlier (1).
Since then, there has been a buildup of scientific evidence about the positive relationship between well-being, health and green spaces. In his book ‘Une écologie du bonheur’(2) (‘The Ecology of Happiness’), Eric Lambin, a professor of human-environment interactions at Louvain Catholic University (Belgium) and Stanford University (United States), shows that, according to some studies, being close to or even just being able to see nature increases well-being in the workplace. For instance, people with a sedentary job who have a window with a view of a car park, a street or buildings suffer more frequently from headaches than those whose window gives onto trees, shrubs and flowers. Other work shows that the residents of dilapidated neighborhoods that are without natural vegetation appear more often to show symptoms of chronic stress and suffer from health problems. In contrast, two epidemiological studies carried out in the Netherlands show that the residents of neighborhoods with abundant green spaces state that they have fewer health problems (3,4). In Japan, two other studies also show that people who make use of urban green spaces live longer (5,6). And finally, many studies show that contact with nature is an effective way of recovering from the mental fatigue caused by the ever-faster pace of modern life.

1 - R.S. Ulrich, Science, 224, 420, 1984.
2 - “Une écologie du bonheur”, Eric Lambin, Editions Le Pommier, 2009.
3 - S. De Vries, et al. , Environment and Planning A, 35, 1717, 2003.
4 - J. Maas et al., Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60, 587, 2006.
5 - T. Takano et al., Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 56, 913, 2002. 6 - A. Tanaka et al., Urban studies, 33, 879, 1996.