The Unsettling Outdoors - Russell Hitchings

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local cityscapes (adding vegetation to places where it is currently lacking) before seeing how Chileans responded to these pictures (Navarrete-Hernandez and Laffan 2019). The authors took such an approach based partly on the argument that, even though a great deal of work has focused on the visual experience of parks, many cities cannot boast these facilities. Their argument is consistent with the findings of Hartiget al. (2014), who note how parks have been the predominant focus when researchers have thought about what they should do with the suggestion that greenspaces promote public health.

      But what if, for other reasons altogether, and which have comparatively little to do with effective greenspace provision and design, people are becoming disinclined to derive these benefits? What, for example, about broader processes of cultural change: the trends that gradually push us to live our lives in some ways instead of others and which, often without us necessarily noticing, are quietly shaping the future of greenspace experience? Scholars occasionally argue for the need to consider such broader sweeps of change. Grinde and Grindal Patil (2009), for example, pursue the contention that, though greenspace benefits appear to exist, we must still stay mindful of their ‘penetrance’. Their point is that we should not forget how various cultural factors may very well be over-riding their apparent draw. Hartig (1993) has similarly argued for studying greenspace experiences in a ‘transactional perspective’, namely alongside, rather than apart from, the broader processes that either push people towards or away from these experiences. His idea is that, though positive responses may be hardwired into humans, the likelihood of different groups seeking out the experiences that produce them is another matter. If spaces containing certain kinds of living vegetation are where we feel most at home, we might imagine that tempting people into such environments shouldn’t be so hard. Not so, according to some others.

      The Extinction of Experience

      This is an alarming prospect. And we should examine the processes involved before we abandon all hope. The leading villain in this story is often urbanisation. Despite the best efforts of some of the park planners and researchers discussed above, city living is often taken to draw people away from the likelihood of beneficial encounters with greenspace. If the vast majority of humans are now living urban lives, researchers should examine how everyday experience is structured in different cities around the world and see what that tells us about the likelihood of people venturing out into greenspaces (see, for example, Turner, Nakamura, and Dinetti 2004; Fuller and Gaston 2009). Another anxiety centres on how new recreational activities could be replacing outdoor play. The migration of social life online and the ways in which many children are coming to prefer computer games over outdoor activities has been a particular source of worry for some (Pergams and Zaradic 2006; Soga and Gaston 2016). Just how busy many people now are occasionally gets a mention – how it is that many groups, in cities at least, now feel themselves to be too rushed to think about ways of inserting more greenspace experience into their lives (Lin et al. 2014). Ward Thompson (2002) develops this last point by considering the apparent stigma of lingering without purpose within societies whose members feel they should be seen to be doing something. Could it really be that the simple idea of sitting and contemplating greenspace has become too challenging for those who feel they ought to be otherwise preoccupied? This connects to concerns (Duvall and Sullivan 2016) about how our technologies can stop us from reaching the point when we are able to derive greenspace benefits even when we have managed to get there. Smartphones might provide a helpful social crutch if we find it difficult to appear purposeless in a park. But, if we have made it to the park but cannot help but look at our screens when we are there, is being there really doing us so much good?

      On that point, others have emphasised the importance of acknowledging the continued geographical bias in studies of greenspace benefits. This has led researchers to overlook certain important parts of the puzzle. Specifically, because many studies have been done in relatively temperate climates, the outdoor discomforts that are likely to be more keenly felt elsewhere in the world are often downplayed (Keniger et al. 2013). In other words, these studies tend to picture ‘the outdoors’ as a pleasant environment in which to linger such that those who do so will soon start to reap the restorative benefits provided by greenspace. Sometimes this is even part of the research design when studies have attempted to control for these ‘contextual’ climatic matters in order to study the effects of spending time with greenery in a more scientific way (see, for example, Bamberg, Hitchings, and Latham 2018). Yet, in very many cities around the world, it is often simply too hot, too cold, too sticky or too windy to make it an attractive proposition to sit outside and start accruing the benefits that feasibly flow from living vegetation in parks. It is a straightforward, but no less important, point that, if the people involved are rained on, or they start to sweat, they might soon leave (and potentially resolve never to spend time in such ‘irritating’ environments again).

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