"Natural" landscapes as a Cure to Modern Life (Spencer Mottley)

     

           One day while siting at my desk, occupied by the constant stream of new assignments and 

upcomeing test I have to study for. I start to slowly drift away from the task at hand and day dream to

myself how different my life is from my ancestors who lived only a couple generations prior to my own. 

In some ways these lifestyle changes are postive includeing an increased standard of liveing, increased

access to information and increased convenience. In other ways these differences are hugely

determinatal to our physical, emotional and even cogentive health. Some of these negative difference in

our lifestyles include increased sedentariness, decreased soical interaction and increased stress. In many

ways the built landscapes many of us surround ourselves in on a daily basis contrubute to these negative

differences in lifestyle for instance the constant sound of construction, cars honking or airplanes flying

overhead often contrubute to feelings of stress. Simairly a lack of sidewalks and bikelanes in our subaran

neighorhoods and cites increases our dependence on cars as mode of transportation which leads to us

liveing more sedentary lives. Additionally a lack of third spaces in our communities like cafes, parks and

community centers leads to many americans going about their days with little to no soical interaction with

others. Over time these unnatural conditions in which we live, have many adverse effects on our minds

and bodies because they differ so much from the conditions we evolved to live in over the course of

thousands of years. While it's next to impossible for most pepole in the developed world to live like they

would of thousands or even hundreds of years ago. I belive if we strived to incoprtate more "natural"

landscapes into our cities like wooded parks, food forest and commitey gardens. Alot of the negative

effects of moderen life could be greatly minagated. In fact one of the disigners of centeral park

(unagreeably the most famous urban green space in the U.S, and most likely the world) Frederick

Olemstead disigned the ramble is Central Park with a heavy empthises on health. He wanted the ramble to

serve as an escape from the rat-race of New York City by useing "art to conceal art" which means

utilizeing elements normally found in natural landscapes to mask man made structures. In conclusion,

after thinking about this topic I was left with a few questions, to what extent can we redesign cities and

subarubs that are already built? And secondly can you even call so called "natural" landscapes in cities

and suburbs natural? My response to the first question is while there are limitations to just how much we

can redisign our built enviroments I belive we can make significant improvements if we utilize urban land

that is ether abandoned or underutizled. (For example, demolishing an abandoned building and useing the

plot to build a comuntiy garden). My response to the second question is while these urban and suburban

green spaces are not by any means entirely natural, they are often more natural than the areas that often

surround them which gives these places the illusion of being "natural" landscapes. Thus serveing simalir

health benifits as more remote natural landscapes do. 

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