CRESH

Tag: Environment

  • A Quarter of the Population Isn’t Visiting Green Spaces – why does that matter and what can you do about it? 

    Ask most people whether green spaces are good for health and you’ll get a fairly confident “yes”. The evidence backs them up. Time spent in parks, woods, gardens, coasts and waterways is linked to lower stress, better mental health, more physical activity, and greater social connection. For people experiencing health problems and even other disadvantages, that connection with nature may be especially powerful. Green spaces potentially act as a health equaliser in communities where access to other health-supporting resources is limited.

    So, here’s the question those of us who evangelise about the health benefits of green spaces don’t ask nearly often enough: who isn’t going?

    Around a quarter of the UK population visits green or blue spaces less than once a month. In Scotland, NatureScot surveys put that figure at roughly 26%. Research across 33 European cities found comparable numbers. These aren’t people who lack green spaces nearby. Many of them live within walking distance of a park. Yet for a complex web of reasons, some visible, some much harder to see, they simply don’t go. 

    Graphic quantifying reasons for not visiting nature spaces

    This is what we call the ‘green gap’ and it matters enormously, because the people least likely to visit green spaces are disproportionately the same people who stand to benefit most from them: those with long-term health conditions, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, older adults, people with disabilities, and people from minority ethnic groups. In other words, the very populations for whom a regular walk in the park could make the biggest difference are the ones researchers, policy makers and practitioners have consistently failed to reach.

    Until now, research and policy have had no coherent framework for thinking about why.

    Introducing the Green Gap Framework

    Published in Landscape and Urban Planning, the Green Gap Framework is the first theoretical framework designed specifically to map and explain non and low use of urban greenspaces. Developed by members of CRESH, Rob Bushby, and the GroundsWell consortium, the framework is the product of an extensive iterative process involving literature review, expert consultation, and collaboration with over 100 researchers, policymakers, planners, practitioners, and members of the public across the UK, Europe, and beyond.

    What the framework offers is something deceptively simple but genuinely novel: a shared language and a structured way of thinking about all the reasons someone might not visit a green space. Not just the obvious ones. The framework organises these reasons across four interconnected domains.

    Domain 1 – Individual. This covers the factors unique to a person: their physical and mental capability to visit, the time and opportunity they have, their knowledge of what’s nearby, their attitudes and prior experiences, and  – crucially – their motivation or lack of it. 

    Domain 2 – Social and Community. Whether or not someone visits a green space is also shaped by the people and groups around them; family members and friends who model or discourage outdoor habits, community organisations, schools and employers, the cohesion and perceived safety of a neighbourhood, and the cultural significance (or absence) of green spaces in someone’s background.

    Domain 3 – Physical Environment. This is where most existing policy and research has focused; the characteristics of green spaces themselves (proximity, accessibility, safety, aesthetics, biodiversity, facilities for recreation) as well as the journey to get there (transport links, neighbourhood design, roads and infrastructure). These factors matter enormously, but they’re not the whole story.

    Domain 4 – Political and Societal. Perhaps the most overlooked domain: the policies, funding decisions, planning systems and cultural practices that shape which communities have well-maintained, welcoming green spaces and which do not. This domain also considers discrimination and marginalisation, and the impacts of climate change.

    Each factor in the framework is marked with a +/− symbol to reflect an important insight: the same factor that enables one person to use a green space may be the very thing that prevents another. Dogs in a park are a draw for some visitors and a deterrent for others. A park that feels safely secluded to one person may feel isolated and threatening to another.

    What Makes This Different?

    Previous greenspace research has tended to ask, ‘what are the benefits of green spaces, and how do we design better ones?’ Those are valuable questions, but they assume the barrier is primarily a physical one; if you build it well enough, people will come.

    The Green Gap Framework challenges that assumption directly because interventions that focus only on physical improvements risk missing the deeper drivers of non-use and, at worst, can actively worsen inequalities.

    The framework also makes a deliberate and important methodological choice. Earlier drafts organised barriers around demographic categories: age, sex, ethnicity, disability. These were replaced with attitudinal and trait-based factors. The reason is significant: the framework’s purpose is not to predict in advance which groups won’t visit green spaces, but to explain why any group or individual might not, and to identify where intervention could help. This shift makes it far more useful across different communities and contexts.

    A Tool Built for Use and Change

    The framework was explicitly designed to be used beyond academia. We worked throughout its development with planners, park managers, third-sector organisations, and members of the public to ensure it would be genuinely applicable in the real world.

    The framework is designed to evolve. We have been very clear that this is not a finished product. Like the influential frameworks by Markevych et al. and Lachowycz and Jones that have shaped greenspace and health research, the Green Gap Framework is intended as a living tool, refined as empirical evidence accumulates and as different communities engage with it.

    The Bigger Picture

    Health inequalities are widening. The populations most affected by poor health are also those with the least access to the things that protect and restore health, including green space. At a time when public health budgets are under severe pressure, the case for low-cost, scalable interventions that can reach the people who need them most is urgent.

    Green and blue spaces are, in principle, free to access. They exist in or near most urban communities. They have a robust and growing evidence base for physical and mental health benefits. The problem is not the spaces themselves. The problem is the complex, multilevel web of barriers, individual, social, environmental, and systemic, which prevent too many people from using them.

    The Green Gap Framework doesn’t solve that problem, but it gives us, for the first time, a coherent way to think about it and a shared foundation from which researchers, planners, policymakers and practitioners can begin to work on it together.

    Find out more

    We have more information and assets for you, including a plain-language summary guide for practitioners and policy makers.

    The Green Gap Framework paper is published open access in Landscape and Urban Planning: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2026.105663

    More resources, insights and use cases are available on the Green Gap section of the Groundswell website.

    GroundsWell is funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership (MR/V049704/1).

  • Green space, physical activity and health in New Zealand

    A new piece of CRESH research has been published online in the journal Public Health this week.  The paper “The role of physical activity in the relationship between urban green space and health” can be downloaded here.  We looked at the health of over 8000 individuals who were interviewed for the New Zealand Health Survey in 2006 and 2007 and asked whether they were likely to be healthier if they lived in greener neighbourhoods.  We found that residents of greener neighbourhoods did indeed have better cardiovascular and mental health, independently of their individual risk factors (e.g., sex, age, socioeconomic status).  Green space might benefit health because it provides greater opportunities for physical activity, and we were able to test this hypothesis because the New Zealand Health Survey included information about how physically active each individual respondent typically was.  We found that although physical activity was higher in greener neighbourhoods it did not fully explain the green space and health relationship.  Therefore, other pathways between green space and health (e.g., social contacts, attention restoration) are likely to be equally/more important.

    Author: Liz Richardson

  • Greenwash: have the benefits of green space been exaggerated?

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    “Greenwash” is sometimes used to describe exaggerated or otherwise misleading claims made about a product or company’s environmental benefits.  People are understandably becoming more and more cynical about environmental friendliness claims – but the danger is that genuine environmental benefits are rejected along with the greenwash, which “threatens the whole business rationale for becoming more environmentally friendly” (Futerra 2008). 

    I am concerned that the green space and health research agenda is at risk of being overtaken by a form of greenwash, as ironic as that may sound.  Green spaces – also known as natural/vegetated/open spaces – clearly have some social, environmental and economic benefits.  The research of CRESH and many other groups has demonstrated this.  But these benefits are not experienced everywhere, or by everyone.  The same wooded park may be a valued jogging or walking area for some people, but a terrifying no-go area for others.  There is much important research to be done to understand and address the barriers that prevent different groups benefitting from green spaces.  CRESH researchers are among many jointly trying to bridge this knowledge gap.

    The greenwash that concerns me is the mantra that ‘green space is good’ – end of story.  At a recent GreenHealth Conference (11th March 2013, Edinburgh) the fascinating results from a four-year Scottish Government funded research programme were presented.  CRESH’s own Rich Mitchell presented on the topic “More green = better health?” and concluded that this is not always the case (see blog post).  Nonetheless, in one of the afternoon discussions one attendee called for less research and more action “because we know green space is good already”.  Additionally, some important Greenspace Scotland work – showing that investment in ten community green space projects across Scotland provides good social, environmental and economic value for money – has been misleadingly reported elsewhere as “Greenspace is good… fact!”  This is greenwash.  It is also an example of a factoid – an assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated until it is considered true (see Cummins and Macintyre’s 2002 paper on how “food deserts” made it into UK policy by such a pathway).  Policy-making based on assumptions is dangerous: Cummins and Macintyre urge policy makers to look at the facts more critically.

    Jane Jacobs – the influential American writer on urban planning – wrote about the greenwash surrounding green spaces (or ‘grass fetishes’ as she called it) more than 50 years ago.  In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961, Random House, NY) she wrote that “In orthodox city planning, neighbourhood open spaces are venerated in an amazingly uncritical fashion…” (p.90).  She qualifies that, while ”parks can and do add great attraction to neighbourhoods that people find attractive for a great variety of other uses”, they may also “exaggerate the dullness, the danger, the emptiness” (p.111).  If the barriers to green space use are not identified and addressed local people cannot be expected to use and benefit from them, regardless of the intentions of well-meaning city planners.  Informing people that ‘green space is good’ won’t help.  The danger is that when their touted benefits don’t materialise, green spaces may fall out of favour, when in truth, and with greater attention to what the evidence tells us, they may have been a great public health resource.  Instead of less research we urgently need to strengthen the evidence base and publicise our findings more widely.  Watch this space.

    Author: Liz Richardson