Not Just A Beautiful Face ... errrr Place

Lake Aquataine, Mississauga, Ontario


"Parks and other green environments are an essential component of a healthy human habitat." Professor Ming Kuo

For over a century there have been advocates for the psychological and physical benefits of people embracing nature and not necessarily of the tree hugging variety! Unfortunately for as long as there have been advocates for the benefits of nature, there has been skepticism towards those benefits.

For a long while a majority of the research conducted to prove this relation between health and nature was done by people with something to prove. This lack of objective research only proved to make people more skeptical of these supposed benefits. For too long the most notable research on this idea was too subjective to be taken seriously, but now there is no excuse!

The National Recreation and Park Association has recently released a number of top scientific research articles relating to parks (obviously) and the benefits of outdoors. The research titled:
Parks and Other Green Environments: Essential Components of a Healthy Human Habitat by Professor Ming Kuo delves deep into evidence that proves nature, parks, and other various green space does actually provide a noticeable benefit to social, psychological, and physical aspects of life. The research done in this study proved that even with the elimination of other quality of life enhancing factors such as income that "... people of the same socio-economic status who have greater access to nature have better physical health outcomes."

So long, skeptics!

Source: NRPA: Essential Components of a Healthy Human Habitat