99 research outputs found
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Greenways to Health: The Links Between Access to Green Space and Healthy Communities
The European Landscape Convention stresses the significance of “everyday” landscapes in which people live and go about their daily activities; it identifies such landscapes as important for people’s quality of life, their wellbeing and their individual and cultural identity (Council of Europe, 2000, pp 8-11, 23). As we reach the point, globally, where more people live in towns and cities than in rural locations, new questions are being raised about how well such environments serve as human habitat. There is a new impetus to interest in links between environment, health and quality of life, and greenways and green spaces have an important role within this
‘Being there’ is what matters:Methodological and ethical challenges when undertaking research on the outdoor environment with older people during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic
This paper reflects on adapting research methods and processes during the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on our experiences of conducting research on the outdoor environment with older people (aged 50+) living in Scotland. First, we discuss the challenges to the organisation of research experienced in the context of changing government and university guidelines and managing delays to planned research timelines. The shift toward remote methods stimulated by the pandemic transformed traditional notions of the research field. We consider some of the implications of this for outdoor environment research, grounded as it is on exploring the interaction between people and the places they are embedded within. Further, despite a growth of literature highlighting the benefits of remote research, we found uses for digital and online approaches limited when working with older people. Second, we reflect on whether research with older people in the context of a pandemic can be conducted ethically. Drawing on our research we describe how developing an ‘ethics of care’ included negotiating with formal ethics processes but also the relational, situated ethics of qualitative health research that, because of the pandemic, had begun to shift in new ways. We describe the often intangible impacts of COVID-19 such as social isolation and bereavement that we uncovered as researchers entering into the lives of older people. In closing, we outline some of the key lessons learnt from conducting research on outdoor environments with older people to enable future qualitative health research during and beyond the pandemic
Access to green space in disadvantaged urban communities: Evidence of salutogenic effects based on biomarker and self-report measures of wellbeing
AbstractThis paper describes two case studies from Scotland, UK, exploring links between access to green space, perceptions of and activities in green space, and health and quality of life. One study involved a natural experiment to study the effects of improvements to woodlands near a disadvantaged urban community, compared with a similar community without such interventions. The second study, a recent, innovative study for the Scottish Government, demonstrated use of a biomarker as a method for measuring the salutogenic effects of environmental settings such as green space, offering evidence of environment-body interactions within a real-world context of people's everyday lives
Experience of landscape: understanding responses to landscape design and exploring demands for the future
The research that forms this thesis is a portfolio of seven published papers
together with a critical review, set out below, which gives a general overview
of all the work. The work covers a period from the 1990s until 2008, with
publication dates spanning a decade.
The research has developed from an early interest in exploring the nature of
landscape experience, responses to past and contemporary landscape
designs, and what benefits people might gain from engaging with such
landscapes. It has also reflected a desire to raise standards of scholarship and
research in landscape architecture. The portfolio of work addresses three
broad themes, interconnected but requiring different approaches in terms of
method: the distinctiveness of place and design responses to it; design of
public open space for the 21st century; and understanding people’s
engagement with the natural environment.
The research addresses the following questions and is presented under these
headings, each representing a different strand or focus of attention.
a) History, prototypes and local distinctiveness: what is the role of
historic design prototypes in contemporary landscape architecture
and how can an understanding of them enhance sensitivity to local
distinctiveness in new design?
b) Urban open space: how can an understanding of the history of
landscape design inform the way urban open space is designed,
planned and managed in the 21st century and what new paradigms
might there be?
c) Experiencing the landscape: how do people perceive, use and respond
to green landscapes in their local environment, and what factors
influence engagement with and benefit from such natural
environments?
The outputs in this portfolio are shown to have influenced other researchers
as well as policy makers and practitioners; they are reflected in citations of
the work and in government agency initiatives to develop new approaches to
accessing the landscape. Finally, a conceptual framework is offered for
understanding and responding to people’s diverse experiences of landscape
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