Professional Practice
Adult: General Health
Want to live longer? Plant more trees. Fewer trees have been linked to greater deaths due to lower-respiratory tract and cardiovascular illness. , 2013
According to the National Academy of Sciences, ¡°nature-based recreation¡± has decreased 25 percent in the last 40 years. The truth -- one we all know without researchers and pundits telling us -- is that we spend more time inside and are increasingly more sedentary. Getting outside and active provides us with general health benefits.
How Nature Helps
is integral in the push to design healthy communities. Dr. Jackson was director of the National Center for Environmental Health and star of the PBS series , as well as author of the series¡¯ companion book. He believes that health issues begin not when a patient is unwell, but well before.
Dr. Jackson argues that people who live in communities that are walkable, have access to bike trails, and are near parks and green space have higher levels of health than those in communities lacking those amenities.
Recognizing that come from increased access to green space in cities, health insurance companies in Portland, Oregon were recently major supporters of a $227 million bond issue, which was dedicated to the acquisition of additional green space in that city.
Brooklyn Bridge Park / Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.
Research
National Recreation and Park Association, 2010
¡°,¡± Environmental Health and Preventative Medicine, 2010
¡°,¡±
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2009
¡°,¡± Utrecht University, 2008
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American Journal of Public Health, 2007
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Health Promotion International, 2005
"," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2002
¡°,¡± American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 2001
Resources
Explore More Resources:
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"" The Trust for Public Land
"," The Dirt blog
"," The Dirt blog
"," American Planning Association
, University of Washington
Organizations
, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Role of the Landscape Architect
Recognizing that having the opportunity to be active goes a long way in enabling people be active, landscape architects work with municipalities to design hiking and biking trails. In the case of the city of , the city quadrupled their bikeways and the number of bikers over a 20-year period.
Landscape architects also design large parks like Brooklyn Bridge Park in Brooklyn, New York and Griffith Park in Los Angeles that allow residents ample chances to engage in healthy outdoor exercise.
Landscape architects are vital in designing streetscapes and communities that allow us to walk and bike as we go about our day to day lives.
Case Studies
, New York City, New York, Michael Van Valkenburgh & Associates
, Los Angeles, California
- EcoCampus, Burbank, California, AHBE Landscape Architects
, Seattle, Washington, Gustafson Guthrie Nichol
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