The Ups and Downs of Open Space

Green and open spaces are widely believed to improve health and well-being. Public health policy, media, and urban planners frequently promote parks and countryside as restorative environments. In many ways, this is true. Yet the relationship between people and green space is more complicated. Natural landscapes offer significant benefits, but they also carry physical, psychological, social, and economic costs.

The advantages are substantial. Increasingly, green space is considered essential infrastructure rather than a luxury. In countries such as the United Kingdom, where most people live in cities, nearby green environments encourage  physical activity. Studies show that people living near parks are more likely to walk regularly and experience lower rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type two diabetes. Movement occurs naturally rather than as prescribed exercise.

Green space also supports healthy ageing. Older adults with access to walkable natural environments tend to maintain better mobility, balance, and independence. Research in Japan found that elderly people living near accessible green areas had higher five-year survival rates, likely reflecting the combined effects of exercise, social interaction, and visual exposure to nature.

Mental health benefits are well-documented. Time spent in natural environments reduces physiological stress, while lowering cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate. Attention Restoration Theory suggests that natural settings help restore the brain’s capacity for directed attention by providing undemanding stimulation. Long-term studies also show that children growing up with greater exposure to green environments have lower risks of developing psychiatric disorders later in life. Greener surroundings are associated with improved attention, working memory, and behaviour in both children and adolescents.

Green spaces also strengthen social connections. Informal encounters in shared outdoor areas help reduce loneliness and encourage everyday interaction. Thinking environmentally, natural landscapes provide protection. Urban trees reduce temperatures during heatwaves, while wetlands and woodland absorb water and reduce flood risk.

Sadly, green space is not always seen as calming. Some people feel uneasy in large or unfamiliar landscapes. Poorly lit parks or isolated paths can create fear rather than relaxation, meaning certain groups avoid them entirely.

Natural environments also carry health risks. Vegetation produces pollen, and allergic disease affects roughly one-third of the population. Climate change has lengthened pollen seasons and increased allergen intensity. Green spaces can also harbour zoonotic diseases. Ticks carrying Lyme disease, for example, are increasingly common in woodland habitats.

Physical hazards are another factor. Uneven terrain, water, and exposure can lead to accidents during outdoor recreation. Those working in agriculture and forestry face particularly high risks, with fatality rates far higher than most other industries.

Green space also has economic and social costs. Most expenditure relates not to creation but to long-term maintenance. Poorly funded parks can deteriorate quickly. Environmental improvements may also increase property values and rents, sometimes displacing local communities through so-called green gentrification.

Finally, strong emotional attachment to landscapes can create distress when those landscapes change. This sense of loss, known as solastalgia, reflects how deeply people can care about the places around them.

Green space, therefore, offers health, connection, and environmental protection, but it also brings risks, costs, and conflicts. 

#GreenSpace #NatureAndHealth #TheBitOutside #OpenSpace #UrbanNature #MentalHealthAndNature #EnvironmentalThinking #NatureAndSociety #OutdoorWellbeing #HumanNatureConnection

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Welcome to the Bit Outside, where we step away from the noise and spend time with the living world. I'm Richard Viller, speaking to you from the English Lake District, where I'm working to restore woodland, fell, and the wild things that call it home. Together we'll explore the connections between people, landscapes, and the fragile systems that sustain us. It's about nature, yes, but also about how we belong to it and what it means to care for it in a changing world. The ups and downs of open space with Richard Viller. That parks restore us, that countryside heals, that open space almost by definition improves health and well-being. The media says this, public health policy says this, urban planners say this, and in many respects they are right. But today, I want to suggest that this is only half the story, because green and open spaces give us a great deal, yet they also come with costs, physical, psychological, social, and economic. And if we are serious about understanding our relationship with land, we need to be honest about both. I remember almost none of what was said, except this. The speaker explained that he felt happiest when he looked out of his window and saw only red brick, no trees, no vegetation, no countryside. He disliked green space. At the time, I found this extraordinary. Surely open space was universally welcome, but it was my first real introduction to the idea that not everyone feels at ease in nature. Years later, I hired a bus and took staff and their children from central London to the hills of North Wales. On the way, somewhere near Reading, I recall, a twelve-year-old boy pointed at a sheep and asked his mother, Mum, what's that? That was his first sheep. It struck me then, as it still does now, that green space is often talked up by people who are already comfortable with it. For others, it is unfamiliar, and unfamiliarity can be unsettling. So what about the upside of green and open spaces? First, they are increasingly described as infrastructure, not decoration, not luxury. They sit alongside housing, sanitation, and transport as systems that quietly support society. In the UK, around 85% of the population now lives in urban areas, a figure that continues to rise. At the same time, physical inactivity is estimated to cost the National Health Service over £1 billion per year, with wider societal costs far higher than even that. Access to green space changes behaviour. Large cohort studies show that people living near green space are more likely to meet recommended physical activity levels and have lower rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. With green space, movement happens incidentally. Walking does not feel prescribed, it feels normal. Sadly, I cannot escape the aging process. None of us can. For older adults, accessible green space supports balance, mobility, and independence. One well-known study from Japan found that older people living near walkable green spaces had significantly higher five-year survival rates than those without such access. This effect was not due to exercise alone. There was also social interaction, visual exposure, and a sense of place. Each played a role. For sure, green space does not make us immortal, but it appears to help us age more slowly. This is not just a feeling, it is a physiological state. Chronic stress increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, depression, immune dysfunction, and cognitive decline. Meanwhile, exposure to natural environments reduces stress reliably. Controlled studies show reductions in cortisol, blood pressure, and heart rate after as little as 20 to 30 minutes in a green setting. Attention restoration theory, that is ART, helps explain this. It states that spending time in nature or viewing natural scenes replenishes the brain's limited capacity for directed attention. Modern life induces cognitive fatigue, but natural environments allow the mind to rest, thereby reducing stress and improving focus. Nature holds attention gently, without demanding constant response. I know this personally. When I am on my own land, it becomes remarkably difficult to think about anything other than what I am doing at that moment. Problems do not disappear, but they loosen their grip, and on my land I barely give them a moment's attention. As for mental health, living near greenspace is associated with lower rates of anxiety and depression. One large Danish study followed nearly one million people from childhood into adulthood. Those who grew up with the lowest exposure to green space had a 55% higher risk of developing psychiatric disorders later in life. For children, greener environments are associated with improved attention, working memory, and academic performance. For adolescents, access to safe outdoor space is linked to reduced antisocial behavior and substance misuse. These are not dramatic effects, but they accumulate quietly over years. Socially, loneliness is now recognized as a major public health issue. In England, around 7% of urban adults report frequent or persistent loneliness, compared with about 5% in rural areas. Green spaces reduce loneliness not through grand design, but through repetition. A nod on a path, a familiar face on a bench. Public green spaces allow people to share space without obligation. You do not have to buy anything, you do not have to explain yourself. Somehow, too, being out and about makes me want to chat. I talk with just about anybody and everybody I meet and pass the time of day. They like it, I like it, and we part our brief company feeling so much better than when we first met. Human beings are unquestionably social animals. As for the protection they offer, green and open spaces can be invaluable. Urban trees can reduce local air temperatures by two to eight degrees Celsius during heat waves. In direct shade, perceived temperature can fall by up to 15 degrees. Wetlands, floodplains, and woodlands absorb water. A mature oak, for example, can take up around 150 gallons of water per day. That would weigh roughly 1,250 pounds, which is the rough weight of a small grand piano or even a large grizzly bear. Volume-wise, a standard bath would hold around 50 gallons, so an oak tree absorbs three baths of water every single day. It means that oak woodland can reduce peak flood flows by over 60% compared with grassland. These are not abstract ecosystem services, these are actual protections. There are names for this topophobia, this is the fear of particular landscapes, kenophobia, the fear of vast open spaces, or agoraphobia, which is the fear of being outside safe places. Poorly lit parks and isolated paths can provoke fear rather than calm. Surveys consistently show that women are much less likely to use parks after dark, regardless of the actual crime rates. If a place feels unsafe, it is not restorative, it is avoided. Green space that cannot be used is not infrastructure, it is quite simply absence. For example, vegetation produces pollen, and pollen causes disease. Around one-third of the UK population now has some form of allergy, and its prevalence is rising. Climate change has lengthened pollen seasons by up to 20 days in parts of Europe and has led to an increased allergen potency. Urban greening schemes that favor high pollen species can worsen asthma and allergic rhinitis, particularly in children. Historically, male trees were favored to reduce fruit litter. The unintended consequence was higher airborne pollen loads and hence more allergies. Green space heals some lungs, yet it irritates others. The plural is zoonoses, is an infectious disease that is naturally transmissible between animals and humans. Zoenoses mostly originate in vertebrate animals, which serve as reservoirs for the infectious agents. Green and open spaces are habitats. Zoonotic diseases account for roughly 60% of existing human infections and around 75% of emerging ones. Ticks thrive in woodland edges and bracken. The incidence of Lyme disease, a well-known zoonosis, has increased steadily across northern Europe. I know this personally. I have lost count of the number of times I have discovered a tick somewhere on my anatomy. My own land has plenty of ticks. I seem to find them early in the morning in places I cannot widely publicize. The moment I find a tick, I do not wait. I reach for the doxycycline, an antibiotic that is used to treat Lyme disease. I keep a box of the stuff handy, just in case. Urban green spaces, meanwhile, bring different risks. For example, West Nile virus outbreaks in North America have been linked directly to urban mosquito populations. At an individual level the risk is often low, but at a population scale, it matters. I fall often when I know I should not. Green spaces have uneven ground, they have water, exposure, weather. Outdoor recreation contributes substantially to emergency admissions. In the Alps alone, there are around 1,600 mountain rescue call-outs every year. The risk of dying while hiking is low, around four deaths per 100,000 hikers annually. But among those requiring rescue, approximately 6% do not survive. Risk builds competence, but unmanaged risk becomes harm. For many it is work. Agriculture and forestry have fatality rates over twenty times higher than the all-industry average. This frightening statistic may be thanks to machinery, animals, weather, or isolation. The romantic framing of green labor hides a harsher reality. For some, green space restores. For others, it injures green space does not come free. It costs money. Roughly 20% of the cost is creation. Certainly for urban green space, 80% is long-term maintenance. This is often forgotten. Poorly funded green spaces deteriorate, becoming unsafe and unused. Investment in green space can also raise property values. This so-called green gentrification improves environments, but it can also displace communities. In some cities, greening projects have been associated with double-digit percentage rises in local rents. Conservation can also conflict with livelihoods. I see this on my own land. Sheep and deer, neither of which is invited onto my land, eat saplings faster than trees can replace themselves. The only regeneration comes from epicormic growth, which is beyond their reach. They call it solostalgia. I love that word, although I cannot explain why. Green spaces can hurt precisely because they matter. I awaken almost nightly worrying about my land. Some might say that I am solostalgia on legs. When familiar landscapes are degraded or transformed, they become sources of grief rather than comfort. The other night I awoke in the early hours shouting Herdwick at the top of my voice, and worrying that the land I am working so hard to restore would once again return to its untidy self the very moment I was gone. In one respect, they offer health, calm, connection, and protection. But they also bring risk, exclusion, cost, conflict, and loss. Benefits are maximized and harm is reduced through thoughtful design, inclusive governance, and honest conversation. Green space is not a solution, it is a relationship. Join me on my land and you will see. If you spend time outdoors this week, notice not just how it makes you feel, but what it asks of you in return. Being in green open spaces is not a passive activity. Thanks for joining me on The Bitoutside. If this podcast sparked something, please share it, follow, and tell anyone, indeed everyone you know about it. It really does help others find their way here. You can also read more stories and gather more detail at thebitoutside.com. Until next time, wherever you are, take a step outside, look a little closer, and remember every small act of care for the natural world matters. You won't be here forever, but the natural world will be.