Harnessing nature’s cooling power: US announces $1.13 billion investment in urban trees
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack of the United States presented a game-changing plan to address record-breaking heatwaves and climate change. This effort, which will receive $1.13 billion in competitive funding, aims to plant trees in metropolitan areas across all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Read More...
4 health hazards hiding in your garden (and how to avoid them)
Here at The Optimist Daily, we are big fans of gardening. We’ve shared articles about how cultivating a garden is a wonderful practice for maintaining mental health and for supporting our environment. However, that doesn’t mean we want to gloss over the risks that go hand in hand with this Read More...
Study shows strong link between green spaces and less prescription drug use
According to new research, visits to parks, community gardens, and other urban green spaces may reduce city inhabitants' use of medicines for anxiety, sleeplessness, melancholy, high blood pressure, and asthma. Researchers in Finland discovered that visiting natural settings three to four times Read More...
Spending time in greenery reduces the risk of dementia
Here at The Optimist Daily, we’ve always emphasized how important nature and greenery are for your health. With luscious vegetation comes a whole range of mental benefits such as improved cognition in children and boosted happiness. A recent study from Boston University confirms just this. The Read More...
Dutch startup purifies air in urban areas by wrapping buildings in moss
Now that we are aware of the great environmental and health benefits of integrating green spaces in our cities, many urban areas are beginning to design new buildings with foliage in mind. What should we do, though, about the concrete buildings that already exist? Dutch startup Respyre has a Read More...
Living in green space could greatly help your brain health
Your life is one long equation adding up to different results over your life. The factors in the equation could be your time spent with loved ones over time spent at work used to calculate the result of your overall happiness. Researchers from Boston University’s School of Public Health have Read More...
3 ways to relax to the max in nature, according to science
Okay, so you’ve finally decided to carve out the time in your busy schedule to commune with nature because you’ve heard and read that spending time outside has a wide range of benefits from physical health to mental wellbeing. However, you only have access to a city park, your backyard, or even Read More...
New York City makes plans to become “spongier”
Cities evolve. They expand to accommodate growing populations. They alter their infrastructure for new technologies, such as automobiles and trolleys. Today, we even see cities like London, Paris, and Berlin moving traffic away from their city centers, and some are making changes to become sponge Read More...
These 17 “super trees” make cities vastly more livable
Creating more green space in urban areas is a highly effective way to lower temperatures and improve health outcomes during heat waves, but when it comes to tree planting in cities, not all trees are created equal. Research from Rice University finds that 17 “super trees” are most powerful in Read More...
Yet another study confirms cognitive benefits of green space
If you’re a regular Optimist Daily reader, you know about the tremendous cognitive and mental health benefits of green space. Now, yet another study has confirmed the link between nature and brain development and finds that access to green space helps children meet critical development Read More...