Not Just for Hippies: Green Neighborhoods Really Make for More Peaceful People

(Is this a spa, or a university?)

One of the major influences in my coming to Northwestern was the gorgeous campus. Among the serenity of the lake and trees, I could imagine tolerating a stressful schedule and maintaining my peace of mind. You, also, might have been struck by the beauty of the campus when you realized that Northwestern was the best university for you.

It turns out that we’re not alone.

Characters such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, or Henry David Thorough, inspired the current environmentalist movement. They were transcendentalists who found great peace and serenity in nature, and encouraged others to rejuvenate themselves with what nature had to offer.

Recently, social-scientific research has confirmed that this isn’t just a whimsical suggestion for the poets. Frances Kuo is a social psychologist who wanted to know whether greener neighborhoods really make for more peaceful citizens.

“In one study, she compared the self reported levels of violence of two comparable groups of citizens living n housing projects in Chicago: One of the groups lived in a housing project with nice parks and lawns nearby; the other lived in a housing project with no greenery, surrounded by barren asphalt.”

As Emerson and Thorough would have predicted, the citizens in the green urban areas reported less aggression in their neighborhood and performed better on assessed the ability to concentrate.

Green spaces—parks, weeping willows near Norris, perhaps a lakefill—calm people’s minds, allowing them to handle frustrations and focus on the task at hand. No wonder Northwestern students are so successful J

~Michal Yablong