A study in Toronto, Canada sought to find a correlation between trees lining the city streets and improved health and well being that comes along with it. It has long been known that a general sense of well being can accompany greenery, people love trees, but this study is the first to look at it so extensively.
This study involved examining the self-reported health perceptions of 31,000 people throughout the city. A Canadian city was chosen because of the universal access to health-care, providing a more even base and medical environment for the people involved in the study.
The study carefully controlled variables like age, diet and income, factors that could impact perceptions of health, and the results were quite intriguing. The study found that planting 10 more trees per city block ” “on average, improves health perception in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $10,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $10,000 higher median income or being 7 years younger.” Additionally, they found that “having 11 more trees in a city block, on average, decreases cardio-metabolic conditions in ways comparable to an increase in annual personal income of $20,000 and moving to a neighborhood with $20,000 higher median income or being 1.4 years younger.”
They noted that the findings really only applied to trees along the street and not the trees in parks. “It seems that trees that affect people most generally are those that they may have the most contact (visual or presence) with, which we are hypothesizing to be those planted along the streets. Another possible explanation could be that trees on the street may be more important to reductions in air pollution generated by traffic.”
The researchers have acknowledged that there are limitations to their research and are seeking more research to overcome them. However, they were able to conclude that “street trees are associated with a significant, independent and reliable increase in health benefits in urban populations and that small increases in the number of trees along the street could improve health markedly and in cost-effective ways.”
http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150709/srep11610/full/srep11610.html
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