So What, Who Cares (vol 3, issue 45) Why it's smart not to sell off parkland
Hello!
We've made it to Friday. Hard-fought, but well done, everyone. I'm sending this out while nowhere near a computer with a capacious screen, so no graphics today.
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Historically, it makes sense that the percentage of federally-owned land rises as you move westward. Much of the western U.S. became part of the U.S. via a series of governmental acquisitions (where "acquisition" was anything from annexation of other countries' territory to stealing of Native American lands to the occasional purchase), and then the U.S. found itself in the business of getting rid all that land, mostly through land grants and homesteading.
However, a lot of mountainous, arid land isn't very good for single-person homesteading, so moving the ownership of the land from "the government" to "individual citizens" slowed and then conservation efforts took hold. Consequently, the U.S. government owns nearly half the land in the eleven states that comprise the continental American West -- Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon and California -- and their western holdings comprise 28% of all federally-owned land, period.
Consequently, both rural and urban residents have easy access to public lands and recreation ranging from taking a walk -- hey, the Outdoor Foundation used "going outside once a year" as its basic definition for participating in outdoorsy activities in the 2014 Outdoor Participation Report, so walking on a nature trail surely counts -- to backcountry camping.
By contrast, federally-owned public lands in the U.S. southeast stands at less than 5%. Consequently, in rural communities throughout the south, there are comparatively few publicly accessible and safe walking, hiking or biking trails.
So what? If you can't walk, you can't think.
I'm oversimplifying a little, but only a little. A Stanford study has shown that regular walking boosts human creativity levels during and after a walk. But walking isn't just good for thinking more creative (and presumably more productive) thoughts -- it hones your ability to cogitate, period. As Richard Florida wrote:
Research from the University of Kansas’ Alzheimer’s Disease Center indicates that walkable cities also have positive implications for cognitive health. The study, by psychologist Amber Watts, tracked 25 people with mild Alzheimer’s disease and 39 older adults with cognitive impairment. Watts found that those who lived in areas of higher “integration," where fewer turns are required to navigate the streets, performed worse on baseline cognition tests and were more likely to see declines in attention and verbal memory. Conversely, those who lived in places with higher connectivity, with more paths and streets linked to each address, performed better on initial cognitive tests and saw fewer declines in attention and verbal memory.
The idea is that walking flexes and exercises the spatial-relation part of the brain and that, in turn, helps halt deterioration.
Who cares? Public health officials should. So should educators. And so should land-use types, who get to decide whether unused acreage turns into office parks, or if it becomes a multipurpose public recreation area, or if it becomes an urban-edge food belt that helps mitigate severe climate side effects like flooding and build local foodsheds.
There is more than a decade's research supporting the cognitive and physical boosts that accompany increased exposure to the outdoors: Everyone from nurses to schoolchildren, folks with ADHD to veterans with PTSD, is healthier both physically and mentally when they spend time outdoors. Improved health means lower healthcare costs.
At a time when Americans are looking at repeated attempts to sell off public lands and a proposed increase in healthcare costs, a decision to use lands for commerce is bad for the country. Land is not valuable solely because you can make money off it. (Although, let's be real: You can make lots of money via outdoor recreation -- more than other proposed uses for public lands like agriculture, forestry or fishing.) It can be valuable because it makes a greater number of us happier and healthier simply by being available for us.
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Your pop culture recommendation for the day: It's a good writer who manages to take apart a story from several angles, and it has been such a pleasure to see Rahawa Haile (@RahawaHaile) write about her experience hiking the Appalachian Trail in three different contexts. Start with "How Black Books Lit My Way Across the Appalachian Trail," which appeared in Buzzfeed in February:
I can confirm that one does not walk 2,000 miles across the face of this country as a black woman without building up an incredible sense of self. I have seen what I can be. I have heard the voices stop.
Then move on to her excellent "Going It Alone," from Outside in April:
The rule is you don’t talk about politics on the trail. The truth is you can’t talk about diversity in the outdoors without talking about politics, since politics is a big reason why the outdoors look the way they do.
And finally, finish with her excellent "Nothing Tastes the Same," in Eater last month:
It is unsurprising that few frame the Appalachian Trail as a physically demanding food tour, but the hike is a series of resupplies, and a series of resupplies is a series of town stops; a series of town stops is, essentially, a series of visits to fabled restaurants.
(I am not sure how many of you are fellow Virginia Tech alums but I tell you, I actually squealed aloud when I saw mention of The Homeplace in Catawba. I still dream about their biscuits.)
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