'Space and place are central to the strategies and meaning of protest’ (p. xi) reads the opening sentence of Katrina Navickas's latest study, Protest and the Politics of Space and Place 1789–1848. Written, in part, as a response to the 'spatial turn' in History, Navickas makes a cogent and persuasive argument for attending to the importance of the particularities of 'place' rather than the abst...

Background Natural outdoor environments, such as green spaces (ie, grass, forests, or parks), blue spaces (ie, visible bodies of fresh or salt water), and coastal proximity, have been increasingly shown to promote mental health. However, little is known about how and the extent to which these natural environments are associated with suicide mortality. Our aim was to investigate whether the avai...

The National Ecosystem Assessment (2011) found that observing nature and participating in physical activity in green spaces plays an important role in positively influencing human health and well-being. Exercise in green places is associated with positive health outcomes, which exceed those experienced from exercising in environments lacking nature (i.e. indoors). If 1% of the sedentary populat...

BACKGROUND The recent increase in childhood obesity is expected to add significantly to the prevalence of chronic diseases. We used multivariate multilevel analysis to examine associations between parks/green space and childhood overweight/obesity across communities in Calgary, Canada, a city characterized by intensified urban sprawl and high car use. METHODS Body Mass Index was calculated fr...

OBJECTIVES Experiments demonstrate that exposure to parks and other 'green spaces' promote favourable psychological and physiological outcomes. As a consequence, people who reside in greener neighbourhoods may also have a lower risk of short sleep duration (<6 h). This is potentially important as short sleep duration is a correlate of obesity, chronic disease and mortality, but so far this hypo...