Zoë Myers - Wildness and Wellbeing: Nature, Neuroscience, and Urban Design

Pattern Melisa Hasan

This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Imagine a city: Streets in which it feels like the natural world reaches out to greet you, with a sensory atmosphere to both encourage liveliness and creativity. A city where the buildings and infrastructure are nested within a peppering of irregular, multisensory, organic, and incidental natural spaces, such that nature becomes an everyday interaction. Bees buzz in colorful pollinators beside your window. The footpath you walk to get to the bus or school is lined with wild verges filled with fruit trees, native plants, and vegetables which change from day to day, week to week, season to season. Stormwater drains previously hidden behind fences are converted into streams that are alive with the sound of frogs and insects, and that encourage you to cut through the back of neighborhoods, avoiding traffic. Slightly unkempt grasses grow alongside shops, through cracks in the footpaths, and between buildings, softening the brick facade, where you see beetles and ladybugs crawl. Wildflowers capture gentle attention with their shapes and scents, and diverse and messy compositions along fences. Unusual surfaces and textures encourage you to reach out and feel the stem of a plant, or focus on the position of your foot, or entice you to move differently. Laneways overflow with low hanging leaves that show the presence of the wind. Birds come and go, and call and sing and squawk in the trees of overgrown pocket parks that create stepping stones of mini-restorative experiences throughout the city. The many opportunities to actively be and feel the breeze on your face or hear the rain on a tree branch.

In this city, nature is no longer restricted to the park or the reserve. It is no longer a destination to visit on the weekend; it isnt an aesthetic, or an amenity to be used. It is an assemblage of non-curated, independent, living elements with which you interact and engagean embodied and cumulative exposure to nature. This is not an eco-utopia, away from technologies, people, or modern living, but the relaxation of boundaries between nature and urban in a way that could profoundly affect the mental health and wellbeing of our communities.

This book emerged from a number of years of research, but the bulk of it was completed over the 2018/19 Australian summer. For a book about nature, mental health, and urban design this was a fairly perfect context: the heat, flies, flowers, summer storms, lizards, early sunrises and late sunsets, noisy streets, and happy people out late enjoying their holidays under clear skies, all reminded me that we are part of an ecosystem that involves the messy hybridity of urban and natural elements.

I firstly acknowledge that I live and work on Whadjuk Noongar land, cared for by their traditional custodians for thousands of years. I pay respects to Elders, past, present, and future, and honor their continuing connection to, and care of, these lands, waters, and community.

Thank you to Joshua Pitt and his team at Palgrave Macmillan, who have been wonderful to work with and made this process smooth and enjoyable.

I was fortunate to have two generous readers of earlier drafts of this book: Dr Cecily Maller, and Dr Sarah Bell. Thank you for your excellent, considered, and insightful feedback on this work, and even more so your personal warmth and encouragement. Thank you also to Claire Latan who reviewed the almost-final draft and offered such a positive response.

I have had enormous support from my colleagues and friends at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre. A special shout out to the wonderful Grace Oliver who was my cheerleader and coffee-bringer throughout.