Spending time in nature is crucial for our health, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, one expert says.
As state and local officials plead for residents to stay at home in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, many included a caveat: You can still enjoy the outdoors, as long as you can maintain a safe social distance.
In the absence of widespread testing, social distancing remains the most important tool to fight the spread of COVID-19.
But the recent closures of restaurants, bars, and movie theaters did not disperse crowds so much as move them outside. And when people flocked instead to beaches, parks, and hiking trails, officials began to shut those places down, too.
Those measures underscore a widespread urban problem, says Marc Berman, an associate professor at the University of Chicago and an expert on how environmental factors can affect our brain and our behavior.
“If a city doesn’t have enough green space for the amount of people who live there, that’s a public health issue. Our research has found that nature is not an amenity—it’s a necessity. We need to take it seriously.”
The Chicago lakefront is now closed, as are Los Angeles County beaches and New York City playgrounds. Even popular national parks, such as Yellowstone and Great Smoky Mountains, have shut their gates.
Berman understands that such measures are necessary to limit COVID-19 outbreaks, especially as confirmed cases in the United States have surpassed those of every other country in the world.
“Social distancing is the major effective tool that we have right now to fight this dis ..
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