Why Green and Blue Spaces Matter More Than Ever

COVID-19 has focused attention on the importance of green and blue spaces globally. Research on green and blue spaces and their value to health and well-being have been central to recent work by medical and health geographers. While the focus initially was on therapeutic landscapes research, a focus on health-enabling spaces has spun out in both quantitative and qualitative directions in the past decade. On the quantitative side, this has included specific work on the measurement and mapping of green and blue space and its association with a range of health outcomes and associations. Using both theoretical models and statistical evidence, this work has reflected wider research in psychology, landscape studies and planning to look closely at measurable outcomes as well as ecosystems services and natural capital. From a qualitative side, the range of green and blue space under examination has expanded significantly, linked to both special and everyday spaces acting as health-enabling resources. In this research, there has been a particular emphasis on embodied, emotional, and experiential elements, feeding across into new geo-narrative approaches that incorporate a continuum from biomedicine to the arts, often in situ and coproduced with individuals and communities. From a COVID-19 perspective, new and innovative work is emerging, both in spite of and because of reduced or restricted access to nearby nature. This research varies between countries but reiterates a recurring concern in medical/health geography: the mapping of inequalities and differential health outcomes across places and spaces. COVID-19 has made us increasingly aware of this in relation to green and blue space as wider dimensions of built environments, class, ethnicity, and public policy are shaping very different health outcomes for affluent and deprived populations across the globe.