The pandemic has affected our lives in many ways, many of which will no doubt be felt in the years to come. While many of these effects are clearly negative, researchers have identified at least one positive impact – our perception of natural spaces has changed. The findings are published in Nature Scientific Reports.
As people flocked to outdoor spaces for recreation in the spring of 2020, Sohyun Park, assistant professor in the UConn College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, noticed some interesting trends: more people were on the trails, and many of those people had traveled from far away to enjoy the outdoors.
Park was also part of the Connecticut footprint recording team and co-wrote a paper on the trends.
“What’s interesting was the use of rural trails as opposed to urban trails,” Park says. “I wanted to try to find out how people were changing their mindsets or their attitudes or their perceptions.”
To do this, Park and co-authors Seungman Kim and Jaehoon Lee of Texas Tech University, and Biyoung Heo of James Corner Field Operations, looked at social media data and machine learning techniques to help make sense of the vast amounts of information on Twitter and try to find a pattern among that data, Park says. They used Twitter’s application programming interface (API), which allows researchers to retrieve aggregated data from Twitter posts.
“We wanted to know from people who have been in green spaces, what they were doing and what they were tweeting about. We used very innovative and advanced levels of machine learning methods,” says Park. “The machine categorized the keywords and classified them into several human-recognized groups. One group was related to nature. The second group is all activities traditional things related to the park and the third one is obviously related to COVID, so wearing masks and social distancing and things like that.”
A new appreciation for nature
Although what people were doing in the parks did not change significantly, the researchers noticed some significant changes in keyword usage between pre-pandemic and pandemic Twitter, with people often referring to nature and their experiences within it.
“Users started putting the word ‘nature’ and nature-related activities or nature-related pictures into their Twitter,” says Park. “It was really interesting because, in the past, there weren’t many keywords like that, but people used keywords like ‘playing,’ ‘walking the dog,’ ‘baseball,’ and other traditional, active park activities that they they were enjoying them during the time. they were there in the parks. If you look at post-2020 Twitter, you can also see keywords that give thanks to God or show appreciation for nature, depicting birds singing or the sound of water.”
What the researchers found was that people seemed to have developed a new appreciation for nature and green spaces, especially true for those in urban environments. As a landscape architect, Park was interested to see if there was something more to the findings and perhaps if there might be some design implications for the results.
Common features in modern parks include benches, walking paths and sports fields, for example. However, Park says the paper’s results seem to suggest that natural green spaces appeal to people differently.
“We might want to go back to the origins of public parks like those designed by Olmsted,” Park says. “In his time in the 19th century, there was a lot of hustle and bustle in the city and they wanted to have space for people to find rest and peace. We might want to go back to that era by living with a 21str health crisis of the century and try to rethink design principles.”
Park says imagine Manhattan’s Central Park, which hosts ponds, wooded areas and meadows. Most of these natural features were artificially introduced and were not there in the first place. Compare this to contemporary parks:
“Modern parks can be well managed, maintained and manicured, everything is clean and tidy,” says Park. “There are some seating areas, paved surfaces and structures where you can play something with your friends and family members, but not really in a naturalistic style. People can feel that in public spaces.”
Outside as an essential resource for general well-being
Green spaces affect mental, physical and spiritual health and the Park argues that these natural elements can be essential in public spaces, especially for those who have less access to public parks, or marginalized communities who have no green space in their homes. .
“I’m arguing that parks are not just recreational spaces; green spaces and parks serve as essential amenities for everyone, including those with low incomes or those with disabilities and the elderly,” says Park. “Parks need comprehensive planning approaches that can add to current principles for the development of the park.”
Park explains that many people are involved in the planning, design and management of parks and green spaces. The tricky part is that the more naturalistic, garden concept for public parks may require more planning and maintenance, and therefore these design features rely more heavily on resources and budgets.
“In the long term, I think this is the direction we need to go, and now the park officials and managers need to work together with those who live nearby so that we can have a kind of co-management of approaches to the the future,” says Park.
This study highlights the importance of these design features and their roles in our emotional and spiritual well-being, and Park says it’s important for the public to advocate for our green spaces. Research like this can inform decision-making.
“It’s important that the public and decision makers understand that ultimately, we need to have a budget to have more natural features and nature-oriented programs in the park. We all need to be more active about what cities are doing. This can start with joining your city’s Conservation Commission or attending monthly meetings. Get involved and make your voice heard. This makes a big difference and can influence big decisions. Sometimes these decision-makers are really driven by how stakeholders feel, so the first step should be to provide some input and feedback on public decision-making. It’s empowering and more people should be involved in public planning.”
