The Effects of Greenspaces On Human Health Part 3: Defining Spaces
I believe that the biggest determination of labeling a space as a city is its time continuum. Cities, in my opinion, should be permanent residencies. It should be a hub of activity. There should be spaces delineated for: markets and commerce, religion and self-expression, culture, protection from the elements, and the like. There should be a central governing body who creates laws and regulations. There should be mass systems for communication and transportation. All in all, a city should be like an organism; adapting and changing as it needs to support its inhabitants.
The UN agrees that there is no “standardized international criteria” (“The World's Cities in 2016.”; p.1). However, there are three very common definitions:
1. The “City Proper” or administrative boundary.
2. The “Urban Agglomeration” or built environment.
3. The “Metropolitan Area” or economic and social interactions of nearby areas.
Each of these categorizes human populace based on whichever aspect of urban life they believe is most important. The UN then further specifies their definition of cities; creating the term “Megacities” (“The World's Cities in 2016.”; p.2). This term is usually reserved for cities of over 10 million residents. These are continually becoming more and more common. In 2016, 31 cities were considered “Megacities”, and by 2030 “their number is projected to rise to 41” (“The World'sCities in 2016.”; p.2). Today, many of these megacities are located in 3rd world or developing countries, and this will continue to be the case. In fact, there will be even more megacities in countries that are, traditionally, seen as not as well off as the developed nations. This brings up the question of whether or not we should leave them to develop these hugely populated centers by themselves or try to invest in them and help with their planning and design. Should we let them become places overridden by people or should we help them create healthy spaces that do indeed accommodate the high amounts of traffic they will encounter?
Similarly, there is no exact definition of what makes a “greenspace”. There are several scholarly answers which range from grammerly definitions based on how the actual word is formed, to those that are based on scale, to those that find their meaning in how the spaces are used. To start with, there is a difference between “green spaces” and “greenspaces”. Taylor and Hochuli write a concise description on how these two terms differ. In the first writing, “greenspace”, the adjective green is used to modify the noun, space. It is giving the space the quality of being green. That could mean that it is covered in vegetation, and therefore covered in, literally, greenery. Alternatively, it could mean that a space is symbolically an environmentally safe space. “Greenspaces” can then be considered a compound noun which has a specific distinction whose “function is in relation to urban inhabitants” (Taylor, Lucy, and Dieter F. Hochuli ; p.26):
There were two major distinctions of greenspaces in association to their usages (Taylor, Lucy, and Dieter F. Hochuli ; p.29):
1. Greenspace as waterways, areas of vegetation, wilderness parks, forests, etc.
2. Greenspace as urban vegetation including: bike and foot paths, parks, etc.
These two vary in that the second is more a human-centered approach. In this definition, greenspaces are used to better the humans’ experience of the place; it is not solely a naturally occurring entity that exists. All in all, how we define greenspace as a society depends on how anthropogenic we want to be.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health can be defined as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. The WHO is the “directing and coordinating authority on international health within the United Nations’ (UN) System”. Their headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland, and they have 149 field offices in various countries across the globe. As a subsection of the UN, this means that they are the most widely accepted body of international governance. This group focuses on raising the world’s “norms and standards” on health by increased research, monitoring, and policy making. They work with both disease containment and avoidance; as well as, “life-course” practices.
“Life-course” takes into account the “environmental and social determinants of health”.
These determinants include various attributes such as: location, gender, age, human rights, race, and equity. Because of this, we can see that their definition includes more than just physical attributes that can determine whether a person is healthy or not. Instead, it takes external influences into account also.
Overall, through this three part series I plan to explore how we can create better spaces that promote biophilia and are user-centered.