Comment: Healing in the Urban Environment A Person/Plant Viewpoint

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Abstract
The technological world is far different from the primitive environment in which man evolved. It may be that the inability of urban environments to satisfy human needs acquired during evolution contributes to urban stress. Strategies for achieving a better fit of man in the built environment might be found in urban activities and settings involving nature which are life-enhancing, and create a sense of tranquility and well-being. Gardening projects in low income areas of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Vancouver, B.C. are shown to provide human benefits and satisfactions of enhanced self-esteem, increased sociability, reduction in vandalism, cleaner streets, painted buildings, and revitalized neighborhoods. Another area of benefit is delineated by current psychological research which identifies landscape configurations that people consistently prefer and find satisfying, and sees them as the kinds of settings which would have provided survival information for primitive man. Researchers theorize that today, the preferred landscape configurations satisfy sign stimuli that. man learned to prefer during evolution. Architects, planners, psychologists, and sociologists are challenged to recognize these person/plant relationships, to study them to understand their human benefits, and to use them for relieving stress in existing situations and preventing stress in environments yet to be built.

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