We've been here before, toxifying our cities in the name of progress. The mid 1800's saw a number of outbreaks of disease related to larger numbers of people living in industrialised cities and environmental stressors which harmed the public's health, triggering change. The cholera outbreak of 1832 and the Great Stink of 1858 showed a lack of sanitation was harming human health; infrastructure did not meet the needs of the populace. Motivated by an outbreak of typhoid in 1838, social reformer Edwin Chadwick's investigation into urban sanitation explored how the city's design led to negative health outcomes and the spread of disease. His response was to effect social justice for the 'labouring population of Great Britain', recommending improved drainage, clean water and removal of waste in addition to government pensions, a shorter work day and a transfer of funds from prisons to preventative policing - not so dissimilar to calls for social and environmental justice today. We are also at a time of reckoning, in a year we couldn't breathe. Sanitation and disease in our era is not just viral and bacterial outbreaks but pollutants and stress.
De-traumatising the city means implementing environmental justice and allowing more space for nature as a health necessity for all, not just the moneyed and privileged.
We know that people who live closer to green spaces live longer and are less stressed. We know that people in areas of deficiency of access to green space also experience higher levels of air pollution, and areas with fewer trees experience more crime and hotter summers. So why are we not addressing these disparities as a public health issue?
In the same way the State (at least in some countries) provides everyone with sanitation as a basic of health, everyone should be provided with nature sufficient to mitigate city stressors. Nature contact is a life lengthening, health supporting essential, not a luxury. We need to do more than make streets look pretty with flower boxes. We need to be brave and create enough nature sites in neighbourhoods as needed to recover our health. Nature's recovery and our own are intertwined.
Air pollution is no more a necessary evil that open sewers were in the 1800's – there may be a period of change or temporary inconvenience to achieve a better life for us and future generations. We should be glad that Victorian Londoners accepted this inconvenience so that we are no longer troubled by stink and cholera.
Increasing wildlife sites will offer some respite; soft ground, tree leaves and bark absorb sound waves, dulling the abrasive impact of loud noise, lessening the impact of sound on our nervous system. They will also cool our cities and absorb pollutants.
Rather than conceiving parks as boundaried spaces within a city, we need to think of the city as a habitat and consider whether it is fit for a human, and be concerned with the quality of the air we breathe, the noises we hear and the state of 'living' we are able to achieve within it.
Think of the city as our zoo: if we must be removed entirely from a fully natural habitat, as much as possible needs to be brought in to make it habitable without us becoming depressed or enraged.
