Green infrastructure as a disease prevention and rehabilitation tool

Abstract

In recent years, the social “green movement” has picked up its pace. People living in cities often complain about lack of greenery and fi ght to preserve every tree and patch of grass. Their arguments, like need for recreational spaces, places for children, adjustment to climate change and improvement of air quality, while valid, often fall on deaf ears. The main reason for that is, of course, additional expense connected to maintenance of greenery and costs of creating new parks, that municipalities do not always wish to bear. It is also a common perception, that it is more economically valid to dedicate unused areas to housing, commercial or industrial development. In this article, I would like to present several new arguments that might tip the scales in an ongoing struggle to keep our cities green. This new “chance” for development of greenery comes directly from a medical sector and is connected to modern diseases. If we look at the list of top 10 causes of death provided by the World Health Organization, we will notice that the fi rst two positions, ischemic heart disease and stroke, overshadow the rest, causing over a quarter of all deaths worldwide every year (Table 1). This list, of course, varies from country to country, however, this article tries to focus on high and middle income countries, as it will go over several disease factors that are not present in low income countries. The reasons for this apparent epidemic are many. Over the years the medical sector researched the impact of smoking, drinking alcohol and unhealthy diet on this diseases (Scarborough et al., 2011). Recently however, one key factor has been gathering more attention and much more research began to admit it’s critical role in modern “epidemics”. This factor is, of course, physical inactivity (Blair & Morris, 2009). It lies in an area of general knowledge, that being active, Scientifi c Review – Engineering and Environmental Sciences (2019), 28 (4), 682–689 Sci. Rev. Eng. Env. Sci. (2019), 28 (4) Przegląd Naukowy – Inżynieria i Kształtowanie Środowiska (2019), 28 (4), 682–689 Prz. Nauk. Inż. Kszt. Środ. (2019), 28 (4) http://iks.pn.sggw.pl DOI 10.22630/PNIKS.2019.28.4.61