City Life = Brain Damage?
posted by John Buntin
The evidence is surprisingly strong, some neuroscientists say.
Attention and self-control are particularly harmed by urban life. The best antidote seems to be a big dose of nature. In particular, humans respond well to the the rich variety of places like New York's Central Park.
In contrast, researchers say, the denuded savanna of, say, the national Mall in downtown Washington does little to soothe the mind or promote sanity.
Could this explain the occasional madness of Congress? If the incoming Obama administration wants to bring sanity to Washington, DC perhaps it should plant some trees as part of that stimulus package...
This explains a lot.
I often reflect on the relationship between urbanism, Maslow's Hierarchy, and Calhoun's rat study. See
. My professional dictate is to pack density into urban areas in order to protect rural areas...with strains of "Don't Fence Me In" playing in the background.
Posted by: Deborah Johnson | Wednesday, January 07, 2009 at 08:16 AM
Dangit that feature blocking the posting of URLs is irritating! So here it is with special characters spelled out, in parens:
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Posted by: Deborah Johnson | Wednesday, January 07, 2009 at 08:21 AM