William “Ned” Friedman, Joseph G. Allen and Marc Lipsitch | The Washington Post | April 13, 2020
In the midst of a pandemic, urban life goes on. People are mourning the loss of a spouse, battling cancer and dealing with anxieties and stress from everyday life on top of new anxieties and stress from the coronavirus, all of which is often made worse by economic insecurity and extended duties of caring for children and elderly relatives.
What public-health and well-being policies can help alleviate some of the extraordinary stressors that urbanites are feeling across the nation right now? Part of the answer is baked into every city in the country. It is our public green spaces, our parks, botanical gardens and arboreta right outside our doors or down the street.
Regrettably, though, many public green spaces across the country have been closed. Yes, in most cases, there have been good reasons for the specific closings: overcrowding with parking lots jammed, egregious disregard for proper social distancing and respect for others, and the prospect of drawing people from afar who would be better off spending time in nature closer to their front doors.
But closing parks and public gardens should be a temporary, last-resort measure for disease control. lf visitors persist in violating physical distancing, officials could employ capacity controls like those now in use in supermarkets, timed entry or other measures to reduce crowding, such as limiting parking, extending hours, or putting up signs and enforcing limits. Maintaining the benefits of public green spaces is critical as we also make our best efforts to restrict covid-19 transmission. Public parks (though not playgrounds or sports facilities, which are much harder for maintaining social distancing while using), botanical gardens and arboreta are essential to the public health and well-being of the more than 80 percent of Americans who live in urban areas.
Don’t cancel the outdoors. We need them to stay sane.
The science could not be clearer: The benefits of getting outside vastly outweigh the risk of getting infected in a park.
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