Park Characteristics and Perceived Restorativeness

Question: Discuss about the Park Characteristics and Perceived Restorativeness. Answer: Introduction: Sustainability, according to me was a step that had to be taken by big organizations that had several employees, huge money and time. I have assumed that creating an ecologically sustainable design in any field was the work of a highly paid designers, and newbies like me would require to design something as such. I have heard several companies such as BHP Billiton invest in CSR to ensure sustainability. In several lectures as well I heard sustainability as a high end job. I thought there is nothing I as a solo person can do to help build a sustainable environment. However, when I visited a friends place in the city of Melbourne, I was in utter shock. Not because she was living in a community that had apartments with small spaces, but because of what she has done with her balcony. That is when I was introduced to Green Spaces. Green spaces are a space with some or the other form of plants and vegetation within a building area (Jiang, 2016). This help in two ways. One is the obvious addition of greenery to the degrading environment, while the second is for mental wellbeing of humans. Walking on grass is proved to increase the level of joy inducing hormones in the body, relaxing the feet and reducing stress. The level of oxygen also increases within closed spaces. Green spaces are simple yet efficient ways to improve the degrading situation of the environment and this can simply be done by every single human being and requires very little investment (Dadvand, 2015). Hence as a designer, I feel that I should be able to incorporate this concept into as many architectural designs that I can or at least use the same in building a greener home My perspective of sustainability after seeing green spaces has considerable changed. I have seen several people with the initial perspective I had above sustainability. I have always assumed it was a costly affair. For example, when people talk about the need for energy saving the first thing that pops into my mind are these expensive solar panels that need high investment in the beginning. And we had to wait a few years to reap the benefits of sustainable electricity. In 2010, American based company Jones Lang LaSalle has conducted a survey to understand if the employee where willing to pay premium rent for sustainable space and have discovered that only about 25% were completely on board with the idea. The reason for the rest 75% not accepting is that the cost they spend on the sustainable space did not seem to worth it. However, the perspective has changed after my visit. Here I see people who simply make sure that all electronic devices are switched off when no required, water is carefully used, and greenery is imbibed wherever possible and so on. They view sustainability as a day to day task and not as something huge that needs a change in life. As a designer I should find simpler ways to adapt practices that require very less effort but as good to build a stable ecology I think the current design of building and house spaces have become very commercial and money oriented. The extensive gardens and parks has slowly disappeared over a few decades and now there are efforts being made to revive the same (Peschardt, 2013). I think green spaces can really be an answer to this effort. I have built a balcony myself to see how the same impacts my life. I have realized that, not only are they efficient but also add beauty and stress reducing factors to a home or even an office (Niemel, 2014). Walking of a grass spread lawn, growing scented flower, herbs for cooking and other plants with medicinal value have increased the benefits if green spaces Also, growing plant in my opinion is taking care of something. The joy of watching a flower bloom from a plant I have personally grown is immense. On further research I have found ways to improvise the same. As said earlier, growing plants that are useful is adopted in several countries. There are several cooks who grow the regular used herbs in the spaces of their Kitchen to use fresh ingredients (Kabisch, 2015). Several massues use sweet smelling plants in their rooms as a natural relaxant (Markevych, 2014). As a designer, I would like to push this a step ahead, and find ways to design bigger spaces such as roofs, terraces, parking spaces and walk ares with simple, yet efficient green space. References Dadvand, P., Nieuwenhuijsen, M.J., Esnaola, M., Forns, J., Basagaa, X., Alvarez-Pedrerol, M., Rivas, I., Lpez-Vicente, M., Pascual, M.D.C., Su, J. and Jerrett, M., 2015. Green spaces and cognitive development in primary schoolchildren. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(26), pp.7937-7942. Jiang, B., Schmillen, R. and Sullivan, W.C., 2016. Impact of exposure to green spaces and laptop use on students' cognitive functioning. In Annual Conference of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, CELA 2016. Kabisch, N., Qureshi, S. and Haase, D., 2015. Humanenvironment interactions in urban green spacesA systematic review of contemporary issues and prospects for future research. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 50, pp.25-34. Markevych, I., Tiesler, C.M., Fuertes, E., Romanos, M., Dadvand, P., Nieuwenhuijsen, M.J., Berdel, D., Koletzko, S. and Heinrich, J., 2014. Access to urban green spaces and behavioural problems in children: Results from the GINIplus and LISAplus studies. Environment international, 71, pp.29-35. Niemel, J., 2014. Ecology of urban green spaces: The way forward in answering major research questions. Landscape and Urban Planning, 125, pp.298-303. Peschardt, K.K. and Stigsdotter, U.K., 2013. Associations between park characteristics and perceived restorativeness of small public urban green spaces. Landscape and Urban Planning, 112, pp.26-39.