The Perks of Public Parks
Going outside to get a breath of fresh air always helps when you are having a rough day at home or at work. In fact, science shows that having access to clean air and public parks improves mental health and quality of life. When compared to neighborhoods with ample green space, residential areas with few green spaces had a 33 percent greater rate of clinically diagnosed depression.
One city in particular has reached a revolutionary milestone in ensuring park access for all residents. That city is Boston, MA. All Boston residents have equitable access to a public park within a 10-minute walk of their home. This was encouraged by the "10-Minute Walk to a Park Campaign," a joint effort by the Trust for Public Land, National Recreation and Park Association, and Urban Land Institute.
The Trust for Public Land works to ensure that land for parks is preserved for future generations. The goal is to ensure that millions of people live within walking distance of a Trust for Public Land park, garden, or natural area. Boston’s urban planning should serve as a lesson for city planners and policymakers throughout the nation. Research has shown that exposure to green spaces lessens depression, which consequently improves cognition.
However, access to green spaces can depend on one's income level. A lack of parks and green spaces in underprivileged communities can be traced all the way back to redlining efforts in the 1930’s. Even today, the distribution of green spaces in cities is not uniform. A study from 2013 notes that poverty and racial/ethnic diversity in a given area are significant predictors of park and green space accessibility. Even though there is clear evidence that non-white residents and people with lower socioeconomic status (SES) have less access to parks, equity in the spatial distribution of green spaces has not been sufficiently investigated.
Moving forward, an environmental justice framework could serve as a conceptual model for examining how parks and other green spaces are distributed. There is a plethora of public health literature indicating that parks and recreational areas benefit both physical and mental health. If human health is truly the primary motivation behind environmental justice efforts, then parks should be included in environmental justice investigations and placed so that no peoples are disproportionately harmed by environmental dangers. The environmental justice framework upholds that "all people and communities, regardless of their sociodemographic background, are entitled to equal distributions of environmental amenities."
To learn more about how open spaces impact public health concerns, check out the resources below:
The population of Boston is expected to increase to over 760,000 people by the year 2030. The significance of urban open space must be considered in relation to public health given the rising density and competition for land.
Underlying inequities in underprivileged and vulnerable communities have become clear with the rise of COVID-19. Future public health disasters will have less of a negative impact if more neighborhood parks and green spaces are built across the country.
