Increased Urban Green Space Improves Human Health: Meta-Analysis

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to provide a robust understanding of the magnitude and direction of effect of urban green space on human health outcomes. This relationship has been studied using a variety of health and green space measures and multiple approaches to collect health data. Due to the various approaches used to study the relationship between green space and health, it is difficult to clearly understand the general relationship. In order to have a robust and clear understanding of the relationship between green space and human health, it is necessary to do a meta-analysis that considers all the approaches to assessing green space, health, and health data. Overall, the average estimated effect shows that surrounding urban green space improves human health by 1.14 fold (~u=0.13 (95% CI: (0.07-0.19)). The magnitude of effect increased when accounting for perceived health and when using greenness as the urban green space measure (~u=0.29 (95% CI: (-0.06-0.63)). In conclusion we can now objectively imply that health can be improved with increased surrounding green space. Further, that the magnitude depends on how studies assess green space and health measures, as well as how health data is collected.