438
spaces must be adapted to the users’ demands and stakeholder participation
should play an important role in the planning processes (as, of course, should
generally be the case, also regarding other planning issues besides health).
As the investigation of the ten English planning documents revealed, even
explicit references to health issues are generally quite vague, e.g. ‘GI promotes
healthier lifestyles’. How this happens is often not explained, nor the means to plan
green space to achieve this goal. To strengthen such kinds of statements it would be
helpful to refer to scientific studies which give evidence of positive effects of urban
green space on human health, and the likely magnitude of that effect. Examples of
such studies include: Abraham et al. (2007), Bedimo-Rung et al. (2005), Bell et al.
(2008), Fuller et al. (2007), Francis et al. (2012), Grahn and Stigsdotter (2010),
Kaczynski et al. (2008), Lee and Maheswaran (2011), Mitchell and Popham (2007),
Newton (2007), Pretty et al. (2010), Roe et al. (2013, 2016), Stigsdotter et al. (2010),
Ward Thompson et al. (2012, 2016) and the Germany TEEB-study on urban areas
(Naturkapital Deutschland – TEEB-DE 2016b) which gives an overview of the
German context. A recent review of evidence on the many ways in which urban
green space is linked to health can be seen in WHO 2016 and evidence on environmental interventions in green space to enhance health is summarised in Hunter et al.
Chap. 17, this volume, and WHO (2017b). These and other similar publications can
be helpful for landscape planners (in private offices as well as in public administration) as they offer sound evidence when it comes to decisions on conflicts or competition between different land uses, e.g. traffic, settlement and green space.
19.5 Health-Promoting Features of Green Spaces
The potential of green spaces to benefit human health, and their actual effects on
health, depend on a variety of features and elements. These features and elements
are presented in this section. For landscape planners, especially if pursuing the third
option described in the last section, such features must be taken into consideration
when assessing the health relevance of existing green spaces as well as designing
new and redesigning existing ones. Unfortunately, to date it has not proved possible
to attribute distinct health potentials and effects to certain, more generally defined,
green space types, such as park, pocket-park, cemetery, garden, forest and so on,
because in practice, these types are too heterogeneous in terms of size, location,
vegetation, design, surrounding (infra-)structures or potential user groups, to allow
for a similarly simplistic categorization of effect (Rittel et al. 2016, p. 50).
Consequently, the consideration of each individual green space is required. However,
it is not only the individual green space which should be considered, but also the
entire open space system, or green infrastructure in a given area (municipality, city),
as one green space rarely includes all desirable features and elements, but the entire
system could or should do so. Sugiyama et al. (2010) make a good case for this in
relation to physical activity, where size of park and the opportunities it offers for
S. Heiland et al.
spaces must be adapted to the users’ demands and stakeholder participation
should play an important role in the planning processes (as, of course, should
generally be the case, also regarding other planning issues besides health).
As the investigation of the ten English planning documents revealed, even
explicit references to health issues are generally quite vague, e.g. ‘GI promotes
healthier lifestyles’. How this happens is often not explained, nor the means to plan
green space to achieve this goal. To strengthen such kinds of statements it would be
helpful to refer to scientific studies which give evidence of positive effects of urban
green space on human health, and the likely magnitude of that effect. Examples of
such studies include: Abraham et al. (2007), Bedimo-Rung et al. (2005), Bell et al.
(2008), Fuller et al. (2007), Francis et al. (2012), Grahn and Stigsdotter (2010),
Kaczynski et al. (2008), Lee and Maheswaran (2011), Mitchell and Popham (2007),
Newton (2007), Pretty et al. (2010), Roe et al. (2013, 2016), Stigsdotter et al. (2010),
Ward Thompson et al. (2012, 2016) and the Germany TEEB-study on urban areas
(Naturkapital Deutschland – TEEB-DE 2016b) which gives an overview of the
German context. A recent review of evidence on the many ways in which urban
green space is linked to health can be seen in WHO 2016 and evidence on environmental interventions in green space to enhance health is summarised in Hunter et al.
Chap. 17, this volume, and WHO (2017b). These and other similar publications can
be helpful for landscape planners (in private offices as well as in public administration) as they offer sound evidence when it comes to decisions on conflicts or competition between different land uses, e.g. traffic, settlement and green space.
19.5 Health-Promoting Features of Green Spaces
The potential of green spaces to benefit human health, and their actual effects on
health, depend on a variety of features and elements. These features and elements
are presented in this section. For landscape planners, especially if pursuing the third
option described in the last section, such features must be taken into consideration
when assessing the health relevance of existing green spaces as well as designing
new and redesigning existing ones. Unfortunately, to date it has not proved possible
to attribute distinct health potentials and effects to certain, more generally defined,
green space types, such as park, pocket-park, cemetery, garden, forest and so on,
because in practice, these types are too heterogeneous in terms of size, location,
vegetation, design, surrounding (infra-)structures or potential user groups, to allow
for a similarly simplistic categorization of effect (Rittel et al. 2016, p. 50).
Consequently, the consideration of each individual green space is required. However,
it is not only the individual green space which should be considered, but also the
entire open space system, or green infrastructure in a given area (municipality, city),
as one green space rarely includes all desirable features and elements, but the entire
system could or should do so. Sugiyama et al. (2010) make a good case for this in
relation to physical activity, where size of park and the opportunities it offers for
S. Heiland et al.