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The Daily Photoist: November 25, 2009
Newsstand: November 25, 2009
Walking down Queen West can be an obstacle course. We've got to navigate the hazards of traffic, meandering pedestrians, and patches of ice at the same time as car stereos, bits of overheard conversation, flashing signage, and the temptations of shop windows all fight for our attention. The chaos of street life can be lively and invigorating, even comforting. Yet a new study from the University of Michigan (as reported by Jonah Lehrer in the Boston Globe) concludes that streets like Queen West are hard on our brains.
Our brain tires out by having to constantly sort through the overwhelming array of stimuli encountered in urban settings to figure out where it needs to direct its attention—towards monitoring the traffic hazards of crosswalks or towards mapping the route to our destination, for example—and what it can block out as irrelevant, like snatches of conversation and the freshly baked goods in the window. To investigate the impact of urban life on our brains, psychologist Marc Berman had some students walk through downtown Ann Arbor while others visited an arboretum. In tests of their memory and their ability to focus attention afterwards, Berman saw that those who'd walked along streets scored much lower than those who'd encountered trees and plants. Surprisingly, Berman discovered that, in Lehrer's words, "just glancing at a photograph of urban scenes led to measurable impairments, at least when compared with pictures of nature."
Interacting with nature, on the other hand, dramatically improves our ability to focus because, while sunsets and shrubbery provide interesting stimuli for the brain to process, it doesn't take a concentrated cognitive effort to enjoy them. Nature, in essence, allows our brains to relax and recharge. Berman found that even images of natural landscapes or fleeting exposure to trees and green space had this positive effect. Rather than reflecting an anti-urban/pro-rural bias—after all, Berman is talking about park-like settings, not about a struggle to survive in the true wilderness—the study is a stark reminder of just how important our parks and green space are for urbanites. And it's a reality that ought not be forgotten when cities and developers plan hospitals, condos, and retirement residences.
Photo by ~EvidencE~ from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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It's always useful to have scientific data for talking to bureaucrats, but this seems like yet another case where "studies show prove" what everyone already knows is true: parks and fields are relaxing; crowded streets with tons of billboards, traffic and noise are irritating.
However, I don't think it's a pure urban/rural split. Urban spaces that are well-balanced and humanly scaled and free of chaos can be uplifting, and natural spaces where all is cacophony can be completely stressful.
This study reminds me of an old essay written by Georg Simmel titled "Metropolis and Mental Life" where the author suggests that living in the metropolis causes a "blase attitude." But Simmel doesn't then go on to say that living in the metropolis is 'bad.' Rather, he makes a point to say that this 'blase attitude' is a type of freedom. Consider that it is pretty much impossible for humans to live in isolation, so coming together is pretty much necessary. In the 'hustle and bustle' of the city, learning to direct one's attention away from every and all things is a particular skill that gives you freedom to go about doing whatever it is you're doing. On the other hand, writings on cities have nearly always come up against a threshold that says "too much!" - that a place can become 'too' busy, 'too many' people, etc. Aristotle actually gave a specific number of people who 'ought' to inhabit the polis, but this is a very different time/space. Today, we often hear a similar sentiment - this street is too busy, there are too many people, etc. But no one has really identified or marked this limit... and it likely isn't going to be identified if the discourse remains 'scientific': counting people. Philosophy is much more likely to do this.
that was supposed to be a comment to the article, not to David Newland.