Nature, Healthy to the Environment and You Essay

passim snip cities make been the gathering manoeuver of great thinkers and idealist who have moved our world forward. Being a place where many mountain who hold similar ideas may gather and form a community, metropolis life brings inspiration and innovation to many common aspects of life much(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) as art, technology, and pop culture. Without such urbanized areas the world may non have been home to the revolutionary ideas of great minds like James Joyce, Shakespeare, or even Einstein who was inspired by commuter trains (Lehrer par. 1). And yet, todays modern cities have shifted from not only a metropolis of ideas hardly champion that keister be equally detrimental to ones mind and health. The expanding urbanization and race inside cities have torn bulge the natural environment and replaced it with a jungle of concrete. Instead of inhabiting wide-open spaces as humans have lived in for thousands of familys, many cities have become crowd s urrounded by strangers, bustling cars, traffic, lights, and millions of different noises in a aspect almost devoid of spirit.Imagine walking down a move sidewalk trying to maneuver around oncoming pedestrians, making certainly to keep up with the ever fluctuating traffic flow and preventing yourself from world distracted by the many commercialized advertisement signs, posters, and billboards. Cars are approve up as far as the eye can see, clamouring their horns and flashing their taillights as they inch forward. To many, it is common k forthwithledge how exhausting the metropolis life can be, but recent studies have shown just how drastically being in an urban environment can imp seam ones mental capabilities. Consider everything that your brain has to keep track of and its no wonder why your brain would have a hard time keeping everything in memory, and remaining calm. The imageled perception trained to stay pore can be very taxing on our minds.Settings similar to the hi gher up are an everyday experience in the United States most urbanized cities from New York to San Francisco however, places like this arent just throttle to the U.S. people all across the world are suffering. In fact, cardinal years ago only 10% of the worlds population lived in cities. Those statistics have since changed to over 50% with an estimated 75% by the year 2050, accounting for the production of two-thirds of the worlds postcode and carbon emissions, place a strain on the environments sustainability of clean demarcation. This attach in the use of economical resources and the production of pollution has led to a sharp increase of many diseases such as asthma which now affects nearly 1 in every 10 children living in the United States, or attention deficit disorder, which is much much unmingled to those who live in urban environments rather than those in a more natural setting.Marc G. Berman, a professor at the University of Michigan performed two experiments mak e in 2008 which tested the restorative effects on cognitive mental process of interactions within natural environments compared to more urbanized areas. For the first experiment students were precondition GPS receivers and were told to take a fifty-to-fifty five minute walk in every the Ann Arbor Arboretum (a park near campus) or to walk in downtown Ann Arbor. The students then took a psychological test of attention and on the job(p) memory by repeating a series of three to ennead numbers backwards. As a result, people who had walked through the urban center were in a worse mood and scored significantly lower on the test. In Experiment 2, participants viewed either pictures of nature or urban areas to further control each participants experience, which proved that merely viewing pictures of nature can have restorative benets.Even the slightest glimpse of nature can be invaluable to those living in urban areas as they digest a mental break of relaxation. For example, patients wi th a view of trees, flower beds and different greenery outside their hospital window have been shown to recover more quickly than those without. In the same setting from an apartment building, residents have founder self control while able to focus and relax more. read proves that exposure to the natural world improves mental health. Thus, the answer to solving the unseemly cognitive affects that urbanized areas place on our minds is for planners, ecologists, architects, and landscape-architects to acidulate together to conflate nature into cities, possibly to even reinvent them.City leaders should adjudicate to plan large urban parks that include playgrounds, trails, picnic facilities, and gardens such as those in Central Park New York or the Parque Tres de Febrero fixed in Buenos Ares which is known for its lakes, rose gardens and city planetarium. Not only are these parks beautifully landscaped and allow city residents a place of relaxation, they may also encourage visitor s from all over the region, resulting in economic growth. Of course, the benefit of extensive parks built inside urban areas does not stop there. They are ecological sy papers essential to filtering urban run-off and the improvement of air quality.Another solution for improving the mental health of citizens and to the health of the city itself would be to integrate greenery into the streets and buildings, establishing a green environment within urban infrastructure. On a small scale, cities may integrate parklets to repurpose under-utilized move of streets or roadways and hand over a space for people to enjoy themselves or the company of others. Parklets are platforms built in parking lanes made to provide a welcoming area of practicality and visual aesthetics with benches, planters, bike racks, or even caf tables. On a much larger scale, architects can work with engineers to build green buildings a structure that is designed to reduce the disturb on the environment and human hea lth by efficiently exploitation resources, improving employee productivity, and reducing environmental degradation.This is achieved through various techniques that take expediency of renewable resources (solar panels, green roofs, rain gardens, etc) measures are taken to reduce energy consumption by allowing extra insulation within the confinements of the building which prevents air leakage while solar panels are implemented to lessen the need for electricity and energy cost during the day. One other key object lens in green buildings is the conservation of water quality. By using fixtures such as low-flush toilets and low-flow shower heads which manage water recycling and benefit the minimization of waste-water.On the aesthetic side, biophilic design emphasizes harmony with natural features by combine the environment with architectural design to create a place both(prenominal) pleasant and natural for people to work in. Due to its impact on human psychology, biophilic design plays a large role in health care while finding ways to cope with the the rates of expert progress compared to those of mental evolution. According to Biophilia expert Yannick Joye, by including elements of ancestral habitats in the built environment, one can counter potential deleterious effects, which stem from this dominance, of uniform/modernist environments, resulting in more positive effects and more relaxed physiologic and psychological states.Green buildings, incorporated with biophilic design would not only come the impact put on our environment by creating a more self sustaining city with fresh air and improved amount of resources. It may also reconnect urban dwellers with the natural world away from the bustling cars and herd city streets, fostering restoration, improve emotional well-being, and promote health.Works CitedAsladirt. taking Nature to the City. Diss. N.d. The Dirt. 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. Berman, Marc G., John Jonides, and Stephen Kaplan. The Cogn itive Benets of Interacting With Nature. 12th ed. Vol. 19.PSYCHOLOG ICAL SC IENCE. 2008 Association for Psychological Science, 18 Feb. 2008. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. Lehrer, Jonah. How the City Hurts Your Brain. Boston.com. N.p., 2 Jan. 2009. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. Urbanized. Dir. Gary Hustwit. Perf. Oscar Niemeyer and Rem Koolhaas. 2011. DVD. Web. Walker, Christopher. The Public Value of Urban Parks. Urban.org. Urban Institute, 24 June 2004. Web. 22 Nov. 2012.