Urban natural environments as nature-based solutions for improved public health - A systematic review of reviews.

Increasing urbanisation, changing disease scenarios, and current predictions of climate change impacts require innovative strategies for providing healthy and sustainable cities, now and in the future. The recently coined concept, Nature-based solutions (NBS), is one such strategy referring to actions that are inspired by, supported by, or copied from nature, designed to address a range of environmental challenges. The objective with this article is to evaluate the evidence on public health benefits of exposure to natural environments and explore how this knowledge could be framed within the NBS concept. We conducted a systematic review of reviews following established methodology, including keyword search in several databases, predefined inclusion criteria, and a data extraction in accordance with the PICOS structure. We reviewed literature on associations between public health and natural environments in relation to pathways - sociobehavioural/cultural ecosystem services (e.g. stress and physical activity) and regulating ecosystem services (e.g. heat reduction) - or defined health outcomes (e.g. cardiovascular mortality). The results show that there is strong evidence for improved affect as well as on heat reduction from urban natural environments. These conditions may mediate the effect seen on cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related mortality by exposure to natural environments. By also reviewing existing literature on NBS and health, we phrase the results within the NBS context, providing guidelines on how public health and well-being could be integrated into implementation of NBS for resilient and liveable urban landscapes and health in a changing climate.

Evaluation of natural sounds in urban greenery: potential impact for urban nature preservation.

Most humans now live in cities and their main experience of nature is through urban greenery. An increasing number of studies show the importance of urban green spaces for well-being, although most of them are based on visual perception. A questionnaire examining people's evaluations of natural sounds was answered by 1326 individuals living near one of six urban green areas of varying naturalness in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. Women and the elderly reported greater calmness when hearing bird song and rustling leaves (and placed a higher importance on the richness of bird species) than did men, younger and middle-aged individuals. Independent of age and gender, urban woodlands (high naturalness) had higher evaluations than parks (low naturalness). Our results suggest that to increase positive experiences of urban green areas, demographic variables of gender and age should be taken into account, and settings that mimic nature should be prioritized in planning.