lives of the rich. In other words, there was something protective about
the greenery for the most deprived people, either by providing more
areas for exercise or by otherwise buffering poverty-related stress.
It’s important to issue the standard caveat here; although the study
was very large and carefully parsed, it’s a cross-sectional study, not a
case-control study, meaning it captures a moment in time, making it
hard to say with certainty that it was green space and not something
else about those neighborhoods causing these effects. So to learn
more, Mitchell later analyzed maps, neighborhood services (not just
parks but transportation, shops, cultural amenities, and so on) and
mental health data from 21,000 residents of 34 European countries,
which he published in 2015 in the American Journal of Preventive
Medicine.
“Only one neighborhood service seemed to have a link with
inequalities in mental well-being: green, recreational services,” he
said. “In fact, inequality in mental well-being among those with the
best access to recreational, green areas was about 40 percent less than
those with the worst access.” This finding would have thrilled
Olmsted; the poorest people were the most helped. Parks indeed
appeared to be a social leveler. Mitchell has his own phrases for these
green spaces: they are “equigenic,” and “disruptors of inequality.”
But a weird conundrum emerged. When Mitchell turned his
attention to Scotland, the pattern wasn’t as noticeable. The poorest of
the poor were not accessing green space at all, even when it was all
around, and Glasgow, as we’ve seen, is bloody green. Its name means
Dear Green Place. But the woodlands near public-housing estates had
been neglected, trashed and taken over by ruffians. A favorite park
pastime is wheeling in green garbage bins (not the blue ones, they
wouldn’t do), lighting them on fire and then inhaling the fumes. Not
surprisingly, these emerald areas were actually sources of stress. Jane
Jacobs anticipated this in her 1961 classic The Death and Life of
Great American Cities, in which she assailed most city parks as