Dear Colleagues,

While a growing body of knowledge demonstrates the multiple and positive benefits of urban green spaces for health and well-being, this can often be overlooked when designing, planning and managing our urban landscapes, to a point when poor practice can actually worsen well-being. 

The design, provision, care, use and benefits of natural landscapes in urban settings remain under-researched in academia and under-resourced in practice. In particular, the emerging knowledge of the benefits of natural urban spaces for well-being (Tzoulas et al, 2007; Douglas et al, 2017) contrasts with asset management approaches that view public green spaces as liabilities.

In this Special Issue, we aim to continue the debate explored at the 2018 RGS conference where we convened two sessions aimed at understanding and amplifying the worth of urban nature. We want to provide a platform for scholarship that not only highlights the contested care of natural urban spaces, but engages theoretically and empirically with the well-being benefits provided by a wide range of natural environments in urban settings. We call on researchers whose work seeks to discover how such benefits can be analysed, valued and intensified, to engage with different understandings and experiences of well-being and connect the material, locational and psychological aspects of landscape, nature and mental health.

Translating the ‘many worths of nature’ (Blok, 2013) into intelligent and intelligible landscape design, urban planning, and decision-making that demonstrably maximises human well-being remains fraught. In exploring processes of translation and interpretation, we also recognise the importance of the wider context, which can provide both spurs and barriers to action. We therefore also invite papers that examine the influence of political, social, cultural, ecological and/ or economic dimensions of landscape design on well-being outcomes. We welcome empirical explorations of neo-liberalism, austerity, community participation and national/ local policy instruments as they affect the social use and personal experience of urban natural spaces.

Dr. Nicola Dempsey
Dr. Julian Dobson
Guest Editors

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• Landscape design
• Landscape management
• Mental health and well-being
• Physical health and well-being
• Healthy places
• Urban governance and decision-making
• Knowledge transfer and policy translation