Greenery and Bright Colours in Cities Can Boost Morale, Study Says (theguardian.com) 63
Having bright colours and greenery in our cities can make people happier and calmer, according to an unusual experiment involving virtual reality headsets. From a report: A team of researchers at the University of Lille, in France, used VR to test how volunteers reacted to variations of a minimalist concrete, glass and metal urban landscape. The 36 participants walked on the spot in a laboratory wearing a VR headset with eye trackers, and researchers tweaked their surroundings, adding combinations of vegetation, as well as bright yellow and pink colours, and contrasting, angular patterns on the path.
By tracking their blink rate, the researchers learned about what the volunteers were most interested in. The participants then filled out a questionnaire about their experience. The researchers found that the volunteers walked more slowly and their heart rate increased when they saw green vegetation in their urban setting. They also kept their heads higher, looking forward and around, instead of towards the ground. While adding and taking away colour didn't make quite as much of a difference for the participants, they were more curious and alert when colourful patterns were added to the ground they were virtually stepping on, according to the study. According to Yvonne Delevoye-Turrell, a professor of cognitive psychology at the university and the lead author on this study, the results demonstrated that the urban experience had been made more pleasurable.
By tracking their blink rate, the researchers learned about what the volunteers were most interested in. The participants then filled out a questionnaire about their experience. The researchers found that the volunteers walked more slowly and their heart rate increased when they saw green vegetation in their urban setting. They also kept their heads higher, looking forward and around, instead of towards the ground. While adding and taking away colour didn't make quite as much of a difference for the participants, they were more curious and alert when colourful patterns were added to the ground they were virtually stepping on, according to the study. According to Yvonne Delevoye-Turrell, a professor of cognitive psychology at the university and the lead author on this study, the results demonstrated that the urban experience had been made more pleasurable.
Captain Obvious Was Here (Score:2)
Gee, I always thought the blocky grey concrete look was the secret to serenity.
Re:Captain Obvious Was Here (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid in Phoenix in the '60s, you could open your window at night and it cooled down. Then they tore out all the orchards and started paving the city over and it got hotter and hotter. And with all that greenery gone, yes, it's more depressing. Now I live in rural New Mexico in the middle of a national forest, literally on top of a mountain. While I don't like it, it isn't remotely as stressful is living in that literal concrete jungle.
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Why would you hate living in the middle of a national forest on a mountain top?
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ah to each their own. currently living in a forest in the PNW, about 35 miles from the nearest 'town'. but homesteading/hiking/fishing are more my speed than going out to eat.
point taken though (minus the politics.. have the opposite problem here.)
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Politics used to be less rabid - in both directions. It's really a shame we can't have discussions without flamethrowers being brought to bear. I'm a conservative liberal, or liberal conservative. Neither party really reflects me, nor do the libertarians. But that's not the crux of this discussion.
I'm not an 'eat out every n
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Yes, brutalist architecture makes you happy! Not.
Re:Captain Obvious Was Here (Score:5, Interesting)
Brutalist buildings are the architect making a statement. Ordinary people find them oppressive because often the architect is making his statement in an overbearing way. Living with a Brutalist building can be like living with a obnoxiously loud neighbor.
But as this article would suggest, *landscaping* can make a Brutalist architecture a lot less overbearing. Examples are the Argentine National Library [goo.gl], Vienna's Wotrubakirche [goo.gl], Sapporo's Hill of the Buddha [dezeen.com].
I think the scale of Brutalist buildings is part of what makes them overbearing. Imagine if the architect of this 18th Century street [goo.gl] had made the buildings 10 stories high.
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When I look at that 18th Century street [goo.gl] there's some attempt at breaking up the monotony of a giant slab: a variation in brickwork, the crown molding, the facade to suggest classical pillars.
Even 10 stories tall, it couldn't possibly even approach the feelings of hopelessness and despair that a monstrosity like this [goo.gl] induces.
You're right; the only way to make brutalist buildings less overbearing is when they are short enought that trees and vegetation can block the view.
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It's not just *hiding*; I really do think scale is the fundamental problem. All that architectural detail on the Georgian street would become background noise if they vertical scale was tripled.
On the flip side there are Brutalist homes [home-designing.com] that use the exact same elements of hated public Brutalist buildings, but when they sit in the landscape rather than dominate them they're charming [amazingarchitecture.com]. But take that geometric ingenuity and make it big enough to dominate the landscape, and it just feels oppressive and bleak.
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Yes, pretty much.
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Brutalist architecture is actually quite rare including in many concrete jungles. Did you mean to use a different word, or do you not understand what brutalist architecture actually is and thus label everything made of concrete "brutalist"?
Hint: This article isn't about brutalism. It's about greenery and city design. It doesn't matter what architecture you build, you can still make it a shit city.
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Are you sarcasm-challenged?
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Commie Blocks Are Pretty Good, Actually [youtube.com]
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Yeah! The annual May Day parade that showcased the Soviet Union's superior tractor & bulldozer technology was probably the highpoint of every commie's year. We need incorporate that shitty system as a model here immediately.
"What a country!"
YS
How about ditch the dense Urban City...? (Score:2)
I'll bet the positive readings went high and off the scales!!
Lol...to each his own, but geez, I'd never want to live in a dense urban area stacked on top of each other like rats, sharing walls with neighbors and no yard to fire up the grill/smoker to have friends over, etc.
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Re:How about ditch the dense Urban City...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, to each his own.
Thankfully, in the US, we have a country that is large enough to have environments to suit everyones tastes.
Like I mentioned, I prefer NOT to share walls, so that when I feel like stretching the legs of my AV system I paid good $$ for, I won't disturb the neighbors.
(it's fun to occasionally watch the Flintsones at concert volume).
I like to have a back yard to plant a nice veggie garden, to have room for a wood burning smoker, my grills, my 3 tier all grain brewing system....a place to set up for a big crawfish boil and have friends over.
I like off street parking.
But hey, whatever floats your boat.
Speaking of boats...where do these urban dwellers keep their boats parked?
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In the marina, nobody said urban life was cheaper just some people prefer it. Any city on the coast still has lot's of boat owners. Any boat with an inboard or a large outboard are already luxury goods, how many jokes about money and boats are there?
Also growing up in NYC a lot of people still had houses and houses still had driveways and we knew quite a few people that kept boats there.
I do prefer life outside of the city but my friends who have lives there now have communal or rooftop gardens, can grill
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There are still single-family houses in Staten Island, Queens, and further reaches of the Bronx, but they're almost gone from at least the still-relatively-safe and transit-accessible parts of Brooklyn, and Manhattan also. And, of course, what's left, in ANY of these places, tends to be way more than a typical family can afford.
Still very plentiful where I am (near Cleveland, Ohio), and, compared to most places, still almost affordable. Not much traffic either. But very little transit, and you have to cr
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I live about an hour (or two*) outside of the city, and now have a stupidly big house with parking for five cars and a master suite that is 50% larger than my whole condo was. Oh, and a beautiful view, no electric bill, cheap water, and plenty of nice neighbors. I have several food trucks for dining all within walking distance. (The pizza truck is practically at the end of my driveway today!)
I miss city life though. I hate driving. The * on driving is that on weekends and in the summer the trip can qui
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Each to their own is correct, the problem is the lack of choice. People often quote Youtube videos and point out the virtues of what each is saying but then missing the bigger problem: In the USA you don't have a comfortable choice.
I live in a house, have a yard, off street parking (I have a canal behind me but no boat ramp). I also can cycle into the inner city in 20min without sharing the road with a car, walk to 3 supermarkets, schools, and a mini shopping centre, a sports hall, I'm 9min walk from a metr
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Clearly these people have never left their city. Otherwise, they would realize the inanity of their comments. If they want so much parkland the thing to do is get rid of buildings within the city so open space is available. Do they really need another Habib/Pedro cosmetics store on the corner?
For the record, on the Highline in New York City, there is a large patch of grass (several feet wide and long) put in for the very reason of this article. Grass is so rare in New York that the sight and feel is a w
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Grass is rare in Manhattan except for that big giant patch square in the middle of it. Also the boroughs also have a variety of parks, look at a map sometime.
Is it country life? Hell no, but it's there.
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You need lots of green space, if not in the city then at least very near by, to have optimal amounts of oxygen for people to breathe. I think you'll find that it is a very rare city in the developed or formerly developed worlds that doesn't have at least some. In the handful of big places I can think of that don't, mostly in Africa and East Asia, people tend to have serious health problems as a result.
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Ahh yes, those shithole cities that account for 80%+ of the US population and 80-90% of US GDP [umich.edu]
Is rampant urban crime just a stereotype? Maybe, like everything it's a lot more complex than a good sounding talking point; New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America [bloomberg.com]
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You sure can such as the definition of anecdote and how statistics works.
Yes your small town might be safer and I am sure many else are, that does not mean every small town is
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Hell, your small neighborhood block in Chicago might be safer. I just saw a statistic that the majority of shootings in Chicago occur in less than 10% of the city area.
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Yup, I am fairly sure that is the case in Chicago and that idea follows in a lot of cities today. There is a building case for a lot of crime in urban areas especially occurs at areas where wealthy neighborhoods are next to poor ones. It's just all very nuanced, lot's of different problems all with unique solutions. Even with the nationwide uptick in crime rates we are still living in one of the lowest crime eras in history.
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Violent crime was once limited mainly to inner cities. Always happened everywhere, but, *usually*, in the places that had the greatest concentrations of drugs, poverty, and other crimes.
It's a LOT more spread out now, and, in and near urban areas, nothing is nearly as safe as it once was.
NYC had crime almost under control, but, as usual, lefties then decided on behalf of minority, poor, and other people that the relatively few instances of police brutality justified opposing the police, and then letting ba
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Your second link puts Oakland on the list of safest cities. Something is wrong with their methodology.
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Yeah, as number 15 and that's combined with SF so that probably skews things in Oaklands favor somewhat.
The data came from the CDC so I guess we can take it up with them, I imagine Oakland by itself falls somewhere in the middle. It's got problems but it's not some warzone as people imagine it to be [sfchronicle.com]
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When I think of "dangerous city" I think "what are the chances of getting mugged/murdered from walking down the street?" In that case, San Jose is more dangerous than a lot of places. Neither of the articles you linked to directly address this question. That is the first problem I see with their methodology, that they didn't clearly define what they are measuring.
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The Bloomberg article is clearly talking about death rates, from crime and other external sources. The rest of the crime data we have comes from the FBI and local sources [wikipedia.org]. Looking at that Oakland is actually pretty low on robbery and assault but higher on burglary and property crime, so it's all kinda nuanced. Lower chance I get mugged but I better not leave my bike outside? So much is just what neighborhood you're in even.
Thing is we can't measure crime that isn't reported so if the facts feel wrong we
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so it's all kinda nuanced.
Yeah, let's see a nuanced analysis, not a big city cheerleading.
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Let's not also see a "big cities are deathpits" pile on just the same but that's how this got started.
Not necessarily (Score:2)
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A few good grafitty artists could have given a far better human touch to it.
So what you're saying is "bright colours in cities can boost morale"?
Psychology experiment therefore fake science (Score:2, Insightful)
In other news (Score:2)
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The colors I can understand, based on realtors advising that bright colors will scare off a portion of potential buyers. You're always free to paint it after you buy it, unless there's a restrictive HOA.
One of the things that turned me off from buying in some newer developments was how bleak they looked without any trees, or with only
So... (Score:2)
So... are you telling me to go outside and touch some grass?
In a related study. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a related study, researchers have learned that small children enjoy candy more than peas.
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And both were important research to make. Their purpose is to provide arguments for better public policies.
Banana republic dictators have known this forever (Score:2)
Increased heart rate is a sign of stress (Score:2)
The researchers found that the volunteers walked more slowly and their heart rate increased when they saw green vegetation in their urban setting. [...] According to Yvonne Delevoye-Turrell, a professor of cognitive psychology at the university and the lead author on this study, the results demonstrated that the urban experience had been made more pleasurable.
Increased heart rate? Sounds like greenery causes stress, not pleasure.
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Green and colorful city (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in Montreal, every morning, before the covid, I walk through a natural park with mature threes, the bus station where I take my bus is red and blue, the metro station have bright colors, every metro station in Montreal was designed and decorated by artists. one of the most spectacular is this one : Station Champs-de-Mars https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Study (Score:1)