XI WORLD FORESTRY CONGRESS

Antalya, Turkey, 13 to 22 October 1997


VOLUME 1, TOPIC 3


    1 Corresponding author

    2 Danish Forest and Landscape Research Institute, Hørsholm Kongevej 11, 2970 Hørsholm, Denmark

2. Significance of green areas for man's wellbeing

Kaplan & Kaplan [1989] have formulated a theory on the interaction between man's attention and his surroundings. This means that urban living, with fast vehicles, flashing neon signs and strong colours, causes constant stress. The research indicates that vegetation and nature reinforce our spontaneous attention, allow our sensory apparatus to relax and infuse us with fresh energy. Visits to green areas bring relaxation and sharpen our concentration, since we only need to use our spontaneous attention. At the same time, we get fresh air and sunlight, which have significance for our diurnal and annual rhythms. Furthermore, Ulrich [1984] showed that hospitalized patients recovered faster when they had a view through a window, allowing them to see trees.

Ulrich et al. [1991] showed a gory film on industrial accidents to 120 people. Half of the people were then shown a nature film, whereas the other half were shown a film on the city, with sequences of buildings and traffic. The subjects' heartbeat, muscular tension and blood pressure were monitored throughout. All subjects exhibited strong signs of stress during the first film, on industrial accidents. The stress levels of the half of the subjects that then watched the nature film had returned to a normal level after 46 minutes, whereas the half that watched the film on buildings and traffic continued to exhibit high stress levels.

In Sweden, Grahn has conducted extensive studies on the significance of parks to different groups of the population [Grahn, 1989]. The studies show, that periods spent outofdoors had an actual medicinal value for patients and residents of hospitals, old people's homes and homes for the sick. People became happier, slept better, needed less medication, were less restless and far more talkative. On the other hand, unfortunately, it was apparent that the sick, the elderly and the disabled spent surprisingly little time outofdoors. This was only because they needed assistance to come outside.



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