Image: All 260,000 inhabitants of Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain live within 300 meters of public open space.
Humans are trashing the planet. The widening disconnect between people and nature is a big part of the problem. A recent study found that improving access and engagement would reverse the growing divide and foster the appreciation for nature needed to address the multiple crises of climate change, declining biodiversity, and environmental degradation.
In a 2025 study, Miles Richardson, a professor at the University of Derby, estimated that people’s connection to nature has fallen over 60 percent since 1800. This disconnect is partly responsible for our inability to address climate change and biodiversity loss. Our apathy has resulted because people have less exposure to nature and less affinity with nature. The second of these causes occurs as each generation loses an appreciation for nature and passes on this diminished interest to following generations. Richardson models the relationship of these inputs over time to calculate what he calls the ‘extinction of experience’.
Richardson played with the variables in his model and found that extinction of experience could slowly be reversed by a 1,000-percent increase in access to nature plus a 300 percent increase in attention to nature primarily through programs aimed at engaging kids. This level of intervention may at first seem unrealistic. But Richardson argues that inhabitants of the US and the UK currently spend less than five minutes per day in nature and that a ten-fold increase would be a relatively modest 45 minutes, which seems achievable.
Richardson recommends that urban planning focus on accessible, biodiverse green space, including parks and greenways, and that the amount of time spent in nature be increased by incorporating nature in all aspects of the public realm including health, education, transportation, art, and housing.
According to Richardson, we do not need to increase greenspace tenfold but rather increase the amount of time people spend in nature by a factor of ten. Greenspace in cities should be within easy reach of all residents. This nearby greenspace could be relatively small as long as it is not degraded and ideally part of a greenway system that that links parks and preserves in a network connecting to other greenspace throughout the city.
Since it launched in 2010, the European Green Capitals (EGC) competition has been recognizing cities for multiple planet-friendly accomplishments including putting people and greenspace closer to each other. Ten European cities profiled in Ecocity Snapshots put greenspace within 300 meters of more than 80 percent of all residents. Three of these cities brought all or almost all of their inhabitants this close together (or closer): Nantes, France: Ljubljana, Slovenia; and Vittoria-Gasteiz, Spain.
Huge portions of Stockholm, Sweden, Freiburg, Germany, and Bristol, England, are protected in parks and preserves. As recommended by Richardson, these nearby green spaces make it easy to visit wilder places and directly engage in activities aimed at reversing the nature/human disconnect that has been widening over the last 225 years.
Many of these European cities also follow Richardson’s advice to counter intergenerational decline with school curricula and programs aimed at reviving peoples’ understanding and enjoyment of nature. For example, Copenhagen runs a Nature Workshop attracting up to 10,000 visitors each year and offers a Nature Detectives game at several playgrounds that involves children in environmental education activities.
Since its founding, Ecocity Builders has advocated for urbanization that places people close to everyday needs (including greenspace) and provides planet-friendly ways to access these destinations without the need to use or even own a car. The Ecocity Standards have also called for nature-based urban designs for achieving various goals including biodiversity as well as improvements in water quality, land use, and climate action. It is gratifying to see academia validating our mission: “Reshaping cities for the long-term health of human and natural systems”.
Notes
Pruetz, Rick. 2016. Ecocity Snapshots: Learning from Europe’s Greenest Places. Arje Press. Accessible at Ecocity Snapshots – 6 x 9.
Richardson, M. 2025. Modeling nature connectedness within environmental systems: Human-nature relationships from 1800 to 2020 and beyond. Earth. Accessed at Earth 2025, 6(3), 82; https://doi.org/10.3390/earth6030082.
