Living Near Green Spaces and Blue Spaces

It's almost autumn in North America, a season when many people traditionally move. If you are looking for a new place to live - which locations are best psychologically?

It's important that the interior of any place you live meshes with your personality and the life you'd like to lead there - previous posts at this blog have talked about that - but what should the views out the windows of your home be like?

There's lots of environmental psychology research extolling the benefits of having views of green landscapes. Those vistas help us restock our mental energy after a day of knowledge work and keep our stress levels in check. Not all views are created equal, however. The green spaces seen need to seem welcoming. A dense, jungle-y sort of place isn't perceived as hospitable by most, but a green field spotted with occasional clumps of leafy trees, with the odd single tree thrown in for good measure, does seem friendly enough across cultures.

Researchers have had the idea that seeing water was relevant to psychologically desirable views somehow, but the topic hadn't been thoroughly researched until recently. In an article soon to be published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, White, Smith, Humphryes, Snelling, and Depledge ("Blue Space: The Importance of Water for Preference, Affect, and Restorativeness of Natural and Built Scenes") present information that should drive up home values near water in rural, suburban, and in urban neighborhoods. They found that both green and built spaces with water (or "blue spaces") in them - lakes, streams, fountains, etc. - were preferred and seen as more restorative than similar places without water. Built environments with water generally got as positive a review as green spaces without it, and green spaces with water did best of all. All water view scenes were not as positively received as those with green, natural environments present - but aquatic only views are preferred to those of the built environment and water. If you operate a cruise ship, keep it close to a wooded shore.

People questioned in the study by White and his colleagues were willing to pay quite a bit more for hypothetical hotel rooms with water in view than for identical rooms without - investing in a piece of property with a water view, or adding some sort of water element to an existing space, may make financial sense as well.

So, to maximize the psychological (and maybe financial) bang for your buck, make sure you have a little blue with that green.

As always, references for the scientific studies on which the material in this article is based are available from Dr. Augustin at sallyaugustin@yahoo.com.