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Comment by jnurmine | Hacker News Reader

Living near trees implies living in an area where space usage is prioritized for nature instead of the stacked concrete boxes most people (have to?) live in. It is likely a less stressful environment overall than places filled with just concrete walls, asphalt and, at best, some grass.

Personally I find tree tops swaying in the wind oddly hypnotic and relaxing. I've thought of why... One reason could be that babies around here are (like I was) put into baby trolleys to sleep outside, summer and winter. If living near trees, chances are that tree tops are the last thing one sees before sleep and the first thing when one wakes up.

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From the article:

> In recent years, study after study has found that living in neighborhoods with abundant green space is linked to positive health outcomes.

But it specifically calls out trees as more beneficial than other green spaces.

> But when it come to promoting human health, not all green spaces are created equal. That’s the conclusion of new Australian research, which finds higher levels of wellness in areas marked by one particular manifestation of the natural world: leafy trees.

So it's not contrasting "nature" vs. "stacked concrete boxes", it's comparing "green space w/o trees" (e.g. a lawn) to "green space with trees" (e.g. a park with trees).

I think the OP may have a point, though. You can have an area with lots of big buildings, take one lot and make a "greenspace" with it: some grass, a fountain, some bushes. But to make an area with trees (especially plural), you need some place fairly wide, that has light, and has enough ground water to support the trees. An area that supports those trees will have to be less built up than the average area that can support a lawn (which just needs a patch of light and a sprinkler) for instance.

From that perspective, I wonder to what extent the studies (which seem to be based on Australian cities) is biased by the types of environments that generally have trees in Australia. If you have have an avenue that is totally canopied by 100 year old trees like in some US or Canadian cities, is that enough? Or do you need a fairly large green space that also has trees? I wonder because I always found residential areas with old trees on relatively small lots to be really claustrophobic (but I know people who love them, of course).

There are plenty of areas in Australian cities with older tree-lined streets, so that should be covered in the study.

> An area that supports those trees will have to be less built up

You reminded me of Central Park. I wonder what it will be like in 20-40 years:

https://www.npr.org/2014/04/23/305643904/nyc-s-tall-skyscrap...

This NatGeo issue also had some cool city renderings:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/04/see-sust...

Individual trees don’t need that much space or even light. You regularly see them planted in sidewalks for example.

Further, they evolved to grow in forests when even small openings showed up in the canopy.

There was a period in my life where I suffered a severe psychotic break and spent several weeks in a mental hospital. The thing that got me well enough to be discharged was a portable cd player and a handful of mix cds one of my friends brought me, but what allowed me to fully recover was spending the next 3 months at my parent's house mostly watching the wind ruffle through their collection of Japanese Maples.

Sounds like an interesting story. What made you snap - if I may ask? No judgement. Had episodes too but w/o hospitalization.

It was being dumped by my girlfriend while I was on LSD that started the downward spiral, but at some point I became convinced she and perhaps other people were robots and government agencies were trying to kill me, so I stopped eating and sleeping for over a week which really pushed my brain into the deep end. I made it fine taking care of myself for a few weeks after that even though I was convinced people could hear my thoughts, the songs on the radio were talking directly to me, and God was intervening directly in my life. Eventually I was walking along the middle of a 4 lane road at 4 or 5 am because I couldn't decide which side to go to and both options seemed terrible. The police picked me up and asked me where I was headed. I told them I was trying to get to the beach and they offered to drive me there, but then they took me to the hospital instead. The doctors asked me to draw a clock. I started drawing a digital clock and tried to ask what time they wanted the clock to say, but they thought I was just asking what time it was and they were expecting an analog clock so they locked me up. In the hospital they gave me Ativan which sent me even further down the hole. I have legitimate memories that still feel perfectly valid of travelling hundreds of years into the future on that crap. (In the future everyone was blasian and Google controlled the rotation of the earth to maximize solar exposure to their solar panel farms, much to the detriment of many global citizens.)

Deciding to start cheeking the Ativan and listening to the music my friend brought got me sane enough to start shaving my face, which was apparently all they needed to see. At the time of my release I was still wholeheartedly convinced that there were lizard people among us.

Vancouver (and to a lesser extent Seattle, Washington, DC & Atlanta) do a great job mixing the urban forest and density. Many European cities do as well. Living in concrete boxes doesn't mean there has to be a dearth of trees. It's just most North American cities don't really invest in their trees (heck they don't even invest enough in our kids, so trees are pretty far down on the priority list).

Urban planning in US cities is pretty shit. Even the “well planned” green cities could use a lot of work.

Some cities do have tree canopy goals and survey for tree cover, for example, here’s seattles website linking to some reports: http://www.seattle.gov/trees/canopycover.htm

And raw dataset: http://data-seattlecitygis.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/0b8c...

I remember seeing canopy goals in some southern cities as well, think it depends on bioregional factors along with citizen/cultural interest.

Totally agree about Seattle. Even downtown has a lot of large, beautiful trees. So pretty there.

Stacked concrete boxes are an efficient way to preserve space for trees. Rows of houses and strip malls are.

Housing density and treespace are separate issues.

> One reason could be that babies around here are (like I was) put into baby trolleys to sleep outside, summer and winter.

Finland? Sweden?

Pretty common practice in parts of India too.

Finland for sure

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

I've certainly let our child have a nap on the balcony, wrapped up in warm clothing, in temperatures between -5°C and -15°C.

Both! Finland when I was small and I've done it myself in Sweden. Other Nordic countries do it too.

stevekemp posted a good BBC link.

Setup a network of putted plants around your living room, setup a mini water reservoir and connect it daisy chained to all the plants with a pump and drip system, hookup a few optimally tuned LED lights spread above, hook the lights and pump up to a time to run when you're sleeping.

It's evolution. The windows XP homescreen w/ the rolling green hills was chosen b/c it puts us humans at ease. Our monkey brains like wide open pastures b/c we can easily see any incoming predators making us feel safe.

Wow, such an interesting perspective. I never thought about it that way!

The article suggests that something else---something particular to trees, not just open green spaces---is at work here.

> More intriguingly, they also found that exposure to low-lying vegetation was not consistently associated with any particular health outcome. Exposure to grass was, surprisingly, associated with higher odds of psychological distress. The wellness-boosting feature, then, appears to be the trees.

> The researchers report that living in areas where 30 percent or more of the outdoor space is dominated by tree canopy was associated with 31 percent lower odds of psychological distress, compared to people living in areas with 0 to 9 percent tree canopy. “Similar results were found for self-related fair to poor general health,” with tree-rich residents reporting better health overall, the researchers write.

In the article, wide open pastures with no trees were "associated with higher odds of psychological distress." Don't our distant (monkey) cousins live in and amongst trees, usually?

Open pastures with no tree cover just mean easy pickings for an incoming predator, so maybe that hints at why it causes us "distress."

The protection-from-predators theory is interesting, and sounds plausible. I've always disliked nature that was too much groomed also, like perfect lawns, shaped bushes, parks with only two types of trees in them, or whatnot. Sterile, human-made nature. It always lacks diversity - there are few insects, fewer birds, and no larger animals in such environments. I always thought I disliked it because I love nature and wasn't stimulated enough by such barren wastelands, but I guess ut could actually be my monkey brain complaining about a lack of food/foraging opportunities there.

That famous background makes me nauseous ever since the first time I saw it (and not due to the context of being used for XP)

Trying to help you fight the down votes. You might be technically wrong because you forgot the most important part: the hill. Humans love high ground more than we love trees, for the reasons you cite. Treeless flatlands are terrifying.

I’ve worked in an office where they gave me Windows 2000, but I didn’t mind because I could see the XP scenery when looking out the office window :-)

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