Green Time and Spaces: Why Being Outdoors Matters for Your Family
with Dr. Genevieve Dunton & Dr. Mariela Alfonzo
“Let’s go outside” took on new importance for families during the pandemic. Supervised school recess and organized sports were canceled in many places leaving parents fully in charge of the children’s physical activity. Backyards, driveways, and parks became safer gathering places than meeting indoors, making “going outside” a social benefit in addition to a physical one.
In this episode, Dr. Lindsay Malloy talks with Dr. Genevieve Dunton, a psychologist who studies physical activity and nutrition, and Dr. Mariela Alfonzo, an urban design and behavior researcher, to understand how the time we spend in green spaces impacts our mental, physical, and social wellbeing.
Listen in to hear how the pandemic has affected children’s outdoor time, what inequities exist in who has access to outdoor spaces, how parents can advocate for community green spaces, and advice on how parents can incorporate more outdoor time into their family’s day-to-day activities.
Included in this episode about being outdoors:
How has the pandemic impacted children’s outdoor time?
What are aspects of our physical environment that make families more or less likely to spend time outside?
What does the research say about the mental health benefits to children of being outdoors?
What can parents do to encourage more equitable outdoor spaces in their community?
How can parents encourage more outdoor times for their families?
How Can Parents Increase Their Children’s Time Outside?
Have your kids outside with you when you’re gardening or doing chores. Maybe ask them to help you!
Encourage your kids to do traditional indoor activities outside, such as reading a book or enjoying a meal outside.
Go on family walks. This has the added benefit of building closeness within the family.
Additional Resources Mentioned in This Episode
Parks and an Equitable Recovery Report - Trust for Public Land
1000 Hours Outside - Facebook Group
Bite-Sized Excerpts from This Episode
The Importance of Spending Time Outside
The Impact of Inequality in Outdoor Spaces During the COVID-19 Pandemic
What do equitable outdoor spaces look like?
How can parents advocate for equitable outdoor spaces?
How can parents increase their children’s time outside?
Taking the Hassle Out of Going Outside with Kids
Meet Our Guest Experts
Genevieve Dunton, Ph.D., MPH
Genevieve Dunton, Ph.D., MPH is a Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Psychology at the University of Southern California. She earned a doctorate in Health Psychology from the University of California, Irvine, and a Master of Public Health from the University of Southern California. Dr. Dunton received post-doctoral training in physical activity, nutrition, and cancer prevention from the Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program at the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Dunton’s research examines health behaviors related to chronic disease risk in children and adults, with a focus on physical activity and nutrition. She is the Director of the USC REACH (Real-Time Eating Activity and Children’s Health) Lab, whose goals are to develop, test, and apply real-time data capture methodologies and applications, using smartphones and wearable sensors, to better understand the effects of psychological, social, and environmental factors on eating and physical activity. She is the PI on numerous studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society, author of over 170 peer-reviewed publications, and past Chair of the American Public Health Association Physical Activity Section. Dr. Dunton is also past Chair of the National Physical Activity Plan Public Health Sector Committee and a past member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Implementation of Physical Activity Surveillance Strategies.
Mariela Alfonzo, Ph.D.
Bridging the worlds of academia, practice, and entrepreneurship, Dr. Mariela Alfonzo is an internationally renowned thought-leader and speaker, with 20+ years of experience on the nexus between urban design, behavior, and the quadruple-bottom line. For over two decades, her work has focused on quantifying how the micro-scale aspects of the built environment affect our behaviors, perceptions, and decisions, and in turn, how these impact health, broadly defined to include physical, social, environmental, and fiscal health, to more effectively advocate for better, more spatially equitable urban design. Dr. Alfonzo is the Founder and CEO of State of Place, an AI-driven urban design software startup that helps city-makers make more effective, cost-efficient, and transparent design, planning, and development decisions, which maximize social, health, environmental, and economic value, build community trust, and drive consensus. State of Place helps city-makers harness the power of their street-level urban design data, predictive analytics, and scenario modeling and forecasting tools to create more livable, equitable, sustainable, and economically thriving places. Additionally, in 2014, Dr. Alfonzo was named one of Urban Land Institute's 40 under 40 best young land-use professionals around the globe; is a New Cities Foundation Placemaking Fellow; is a Fulbright Scholar; and a Research Professor at NYU Tandon's School of Engineering. She holds a Ph.D. in urban planning from UC Irvine, as well as a Masters in Urban Planning, and a BA from the University of Miami in psychology and architecture.
Full Audio Transcript
[THEME MUSIC UNDER INTRO]
Dr. Amanda Zelechoski: Can you say... “This is Dr. Amanda Zelechoski.”
Child 1: Why do we have to?
Dr. Amanda Zelechoski: Just try it!
Child 1: I can't.
Dr. Amanda Zelechoski: Deep breath
Child 2: [Laughter] This is Dr. Amanda Zelechoski.
Child 3: [Yelling] Lindsay Malloy! Ah!
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Wait, say Doctor Lindsay Malloy.
Child 3: [Yelling] Dr. Lindsay Malloy!
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: [Laughing] No, come back!
Child 4: This is Dr. Lindsay Malloy.
Child 2: Welcome to the [unintelligible] Parenting Podcast (laugher).
Dr. Amanda Zelechoski: [Laughter].
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: One more time.
Child 4: And then after that, can I have a candy?
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: [Laughing] No.
Child 4: Please, Mommy!
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Okay, ready?
Child 4: The Pandemic Parenting Podcast!
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Excellent!
[MUSIC INTERLUDE]
Dr. Amanda Zelechoski: Welcome to the Pandemic Parenting Podcast. I'm Dr. Amanda Zelechoski.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: And I'm Dr. Lindsay Malloy. We are two psychologists, scholars, and moms, and together we co-founded Pandemic Parenting.
Dr. Amanda Zelechoski: We're here to share science-based research and help all who care for kids navigate this challenging time together.
[MUSIC INTERLUDE]
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: With school recess and organized sports being canceled in many places, parents have been fully in charge of their children’s physical activity for the last year or more. Backyards, driveways, and parks became safer gathering places rather than meeting indoors making going outside a social benefit, in addition to a physical one.
I had the chance to talk with two colleagues, some old friends of mine who spend their time researching the way time in green spaces impact children, families, and communities and how the design of the neighborhoods we live and work in impacts how we behave within them. Dr. Genevieve Dunton is a professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Psychology at the University of Southern California. Her research examines health behaviors related to chronic disease risk in children and adults, with the focus on typical activity and nutrition.
And I was joined by Dr. Mariela Alfonzo, a research professor at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering, focused on the links between urban design and behavior. She is also the founder and CEO of State of Place, an AI-driven urban design software that helps city makers use data and predictive analytics to more effectively, cost-efficiently, and inclusively foster equitable and thriving places that enhance the social health, environmental, and economic value of communities. I was so excited to bring these two guests on the podcast to share their expertise.
In this episode, we discuss how the pandemic has affected children's outdoor time, what inequities exist and who has access to outdoor spaces and who does not, how parents can advocate for community green spaces, advice on how parents can incorporate more outdoor time into their families day to day activities and so much more. Let us know your thoughts or questions you have on green space and spending time outside by tweeting us @pandemicparent or by sending a message through our website www.pandemic-parent.org.
[MUSIC ENDS]
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Okay, so thank you both so much for being here and chatting today. It's really exciting to be able to talk to two of my friends that– from way back in grad school when we were all anteaters. Which for people who don't know, and I think probably most people don't know, the actual mascot of the University of California Irvine is an anteater. And Mariela, Genevieve, and I all graduated with our Ph.D. within a few years but in different areas overall in the School of Social Ecology, which was really focused on finding real-world solutions to big problems.
And you know, in the justice system where I kind of have largely been focused. And then another area was in relation to health and environment, which is where you both are focused, although in kind of very different– well, I think with overlapping goals, but with really different backgrounds and areas. So I'm just really excited to have you here today. It’s going to be fun. OK, so we've heard so much during this whole pandemic about screen time and even before the pandemic, for that matter.
As parents, a really big topic of concern is screen time. But my grad student found this term being thrown around in the literature called “green time,” and he also found that there are some weed dispensaries to use the term green time, which is not the part that we're focused on; right? So that's what we're really– I'm hoping to talk about today. You know, “green time, green space,” and what that means for kids and families. And so Genevieve, what do we know about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected kids’ outdoor time or their “green time?”
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: Well, data have been pouring in, and it's not very good. So a lot of the data shows that kids did significantly less outdoor play and spent significantly less time outside during the pandemic than before the pandemic. And this could be focused on physical activity. We can see the lower levels of activity in kids that was as a result of the pandemic. But also just overall, time spent outside was lower. And some of the reasons are obvious, and some of the reasons may not be as obvious.
So especially in the early days of the pandemic and depending regionally where one lived, there may have been stricter lockdown measures and restrictions on policies, and so we saw a lot of public spaces, outdoor spaces, parks and playgrounds, trails, beaches – I live in Southern California, so – beaches and all those types of spaces were locked down and restricted, and so that makes it hard for kids to have a place to go be physically active.
And in addition to that, though, some of them maybe not so obvious reasons why kids may have spent less time outside during the pandemic could be that their parents are working, and they're no longer– the children themselves are no longer in school or in preschool, and we think about how much outdoor time kids get when they're in preschool or school, and it's actually quite a bit, especially for younger kids.
They spend a lot of time outside, and in school, there's recess, and there's PE, and there's walking to school and walking home from school. So all this time that they would have spent outside at school isn't happening anymore. And then as parents are working at home and it may have been harder to supervise kids outside if ones trying to work inside. And that time that especially younger kids at preschool age kids might have been spending hours outside at a preschool with care providers watching them and looking over them. Now parents are supposed to keep one eye out the window when I'm on the computer, and so that's probably contributing to above and beyond these restrictions in these public spaces that we saw.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: I know it sounds silly, but I hadn't even thought about the restrictions to the public spaces, which I mean some of that has been changed a bit now. Even when things were locked down recently in Ontario, it's like we realized, OK, well, outdoor spaces should be treated a bit differently. But yeah, early on, I mean, there were some pretty strict rules there. So I know early on you had some findings that were covered in Time magazine, related to kids’ physical activity overall. So what can you tell us about that?
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: Well, I mean, we just saw some pretty strict steep declines in activity, and most of it was in terms of outdoor activity and team sports. And so interestingly, though, what we did see was that, of the activity that kids were remaining to do during the pandemic, the majority of it was unstructured, free play and then walking in the neighborhood, and so it's really interesting. So these are kids that may have had opportunities for team sports that were completely shut down. Various types of activity classes and lessons, karate and dance that were all shut down.
And so what was left was this – you know, more if they did anything – it was unstructured and just tag and hide and seek. And you know a lot of that stuff is difficult inside. It's not impossible, but my parents got it crazy to have kids running around inside the house. And so, it really highlighted the importance of one's yard and driveway space. And then the quality of their immediate neighborhood environment and the sidewalks and access to safer streets and low crime type of area. So certainly, this all came out in our data.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Yeah, and I know– I mean Mariela, you're coming at all of this as an urban design behavior researcher and someone who's studied walkability for a really long time. I've definitely learned a lot from you over the years, and I can now point to reasons why my walks might be more pleasant, right?-- than other spaces.
And, you know, I know like that you're from Miami and I lived there for several years, and we've talked a lot about you know what makes the city walkable? What makes a walk pleasant or unpleasant, and what would encourage or, you know, discourage someone from walking or from getting outside? I mean, I guess can you talk about that a little bit like, what are some aspects of our physical environments that would make one more likely to get outside?
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: Yeah, yeah, thanks, Lindsay. It's a great question. And kind of gets to your last point there Genevieve, around, like the kind of what was happening outside the building outside the home, really influenced kids ability to conduct certain activities. So like, you know, from an urban design perspective, over the course of the last 20 years or so, my husband likes to call what I do is sort of like quantifying what people love about urban design. So I've kind of spent a couple of decades being obsessed around what are sort of the nuts and bolts or the features that we interact with down the street that most people just don't at all pay attention to and yet completely shapes our behaviors and the likelihood of doing some things over others.
So just to give you some like, concrete examples, you know, these are things like sidewalks but not just their presence, but their quality. Are they paved nicely? Is there something between the sidewalk and the road, right? Because if you think about it, especially for a child, a 3-foot sidewalk next to a really busy road, which is a lot of Miami, you know, it makes it very unsafe. So even though the sidewalk is there doesn't necessarily mean that's enough for it to be safe.
Which would have definitely impacted parents’ level of safety or feeling, you know, “oh yes, I can let my child, you know, walk around while I'm stuck at home inside working,” right? So it seems like clearly, like the width– the width of the road clearly, access to parks and public spaces and then other smaller things, like whether there are trees. So I think that was one of the ones that you and I talked about a long time ago– like I would lead these walks, right? And I would talk to people about urban design as part of these walks and purposely walked them down a street that had trees and then those that didn't have trees or other kinds of features.
And I would ask them– like, “Which one did you feel more comfortable with?” and they would always say “under the trees.” And then I kind of try to probe them, like, “okay well, which like– what features do you think it is?” And you know, sometimes they would get it, but it's like, hey, this one had trees, and this one didn't have trees, right? And it influences a lot of things. It influences whether there’s shade, or it's, you know, clearly aesthetically more pleasing. It influences the speed at which drivers drive because the shade of the trees kind of reflecting on like car windshields, you know, against the light makes it just harder to see.
So it's just kind of you have to slow down naturally, so you don't beat humps or anything like that. It just sort of happens naturally. So yeah, I mean there are a ton of different aspects in my company, state of place– we measure like over 150 things– I won't list them all, right? But it's things that are obvious and then often things that are not obvious but really influence your behavior.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Yeah. “Street trees.” That's the term that I remember learning from you. And yeah, I'm the type of person– I'm not very observant, so I wouldn't really notice, you know, why is this a space that I enjoy being in versus why is this a space that I don't enjoy being in outside? Or why would I walk to this shop or library but not take a walk in that, you know, in this area like this? What is it about it? It's fascinating to think about how just that environment shapes our behavior.
So I know as a parent I can tell if my kids are not getting enough outside time because they and I'm just talking anecdotally here, right? And they're four and six, and so they just get not even not only physically fidgety and that kind of thing, but they get moody. They get very emotionally dysregulated, I would say – is the best way that I can describe it – if they're not getting outside. And it doesn't even have to be— I don't mean like two weeks of quarantine and that kind of extreme, but I just mean not enough time in a given day, right? So that's my experience as a parent, but what do we know from the research in terms of kids spending time outdoors and how it might affect their mental health, emotion, regulation, and that sort of thing?
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: It's pretty incredible, you know, it's almost like you know you think like the “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Well, I really– you know, the more you dive into the literature, and you see how spending a few hours outside each day can help your child develop in such a healthy way. And so the things that are good about being outside for kids, what's already been mentioned, Mariella mentioned greenness and vegetation exposure, sunlight and fresh air, and then just the amount of physical space to move around. And so when you put these four things together in, you know in combination or even individually, what they can lead to are enormous benefits, physically, emotionally, intellectually and socially for children, so you know, we– the physical ones, maybe some of the obvious.
So kids that spend more time have improved motor skills and muscle strength, and they're more physically active, and they have a lower risk of obesity and asthma, but some other maybe less obvious things have been shown, so they may sleep better because their circadian rhythms are better regulated by– we actually need natural light. If we're indoors and have artificial light exposure, it can throw off our circadian rhythms. So sometimes, if your kids aren't sleeping, uh, well at night, or especially not falling asleep, getting outside more and helping with the sunlight to regulate melatonin, and also, you know, improved immunity.
We talk, you know, we hear about Vitamin D from the sun and how so many kids and adults are Vitamin D deficient and that kind of thing that can do to bones and immunity. And then, interestingly, you know there's some research on nearsightedness and how that can be reduced risk, you know, by that– screens, you know, focus our visual, you know acuity within 24 inches, but you know, looking, being outside, it's much, much further, so reduce risk of nearsightedness. So that's just the physical benefits. But you know the mentioned emotional benefit, so there's good research on this too in terms of mood and self-esteem and reduced stress. And there are studies with street trees.
This goes back to street trees and some studies in the UK that looked at the density of street trees and they found that residents living in neighborhoods with more street trees had a lower risk of antidepressant use. And so there's been linkages there, and those controls for some of the obvious things that you might think and even short walks in nature experimentally have been linked to acute reductions in stress. So you know that just goes on and on.
There's cognitive benefits for kids. There's research on attention spans, and for kids that have ADHD or other types of those types of behavioral or neurological challenges that can improve attention span, spending more time outside. There's actual experimental work with kids who were assigned to play for, you know, a period of time– either on a paved schoolyard without any vegetation or to go for a walkout in the woods. And then they looked at working memory and attention span before and after and saw pretty significant benefits from those who were in the green exposure versus the pavement, so, you know it, just literally, the list goes on and on.
It– I feel like it's something that's just under-emphasized, you know? It's not– if you don't go to your pediatrician and they say, “well, how much time are they spending outside?” It's not one of the typical questions they might ask about their nutrition. They might ask about how much physical activity, but there's, you know, theres enormous benefits to being outside, above, and beyond being physically active. And I'm a physical activity researcher, so, you know, I mean to admit that but I mean to be outside and not be moving can have benefits to kids above, you know, versus being inside.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Wow, I didn't even realize there was that much experimental work actually, which is really fascinating. You know, for people listening like, you know, that's really the– I don't know what you want to say, like the gold standard, right? Like I mean, we can't randomly assign people to live in different neighborhoods, really. Or you know some of those things. But to actually randomly assign people to “OK, this group takes a walk and this groups the control group.” That's awesome!
So very real benefits of being outside, and I can– okay, I've spent 36 days in quarantine between April 12th and June 24th because of my travel back to the USA and a couple of different times in Canada with very strict 14-day quarantine rules. And that was really, really hard, right? Like I couldn't even take a walk in the neighborhood, only could be in my own house or yard, and I'm very lucky, very fortunate to have a yard. Otherwise, you know– just inside for those 14 days, I noticed within those two weeks just real changes in my mood and all sorts of things like sleep, that you mentioned Genevieve, so again, this is just my own anecdotal experience.
I just could not wait to get out into the woods and go for a walk. That was all I kept thinking about, but does it matter like what we're doing outside? So do we have to be peaceful? That's what I craved, right? A peaceful walk in the woods. I brought my kids along with me for the first one, and it wasn't peaceful at all, but it was still a walk in the woods. But like, does it matter what we're doing? Or is it, just that, you know, are we what if we're in a bustling city or playground versus in, you know, uh, a quiet nature reserve?
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: It's interesting. It's a good question, and I guess I would say it matters a little bit, but not too much. So it's not so much that all that's outside your door is a bustling, busy urban neighborhood. There are still benefits from getting outside, the sunlight, and fresh air. So, you know, people who live in older homes may have exposure to dust or mold and indoor cooking. So even from that perspective, from respiratory advantages– now that depends on what the air quality is like in your city. And LA, having more challenges there, but I guess I would say that, you know, getting outside at least some every day, regardless of one’s environment, has enormous benefits for one’s physical and mental health.
And certainly being able to access some more open space or green space has additional benefits, and that's why, you know – And I would love to hear more from Mariela about this, you know, cities prioritize parks and open space. And understanding those benefits and so living even though one would live in New York City or elsewhere. Being able to go to a place like Central Park, where there's green grass and green trees, at least in the summer, and flowers and shrubbery, you know? That there are additional benefits there, but it's certainly not all about greenness, right?
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: I think that when you're talking about urban design, you know, the cities that I work with– I'm careful to have them not create a formula for what place works because there are all different kinds of places that we need access to kind of engender all sorts of different, you know, quality of life benefits, right? And so the same applies to when you're thinking about outdoor spaces, right? Different kinds of outdoor spaces provide different kinds of benefits, and this is why we need both– we need access to good parks and public spaces, but we also need safer, more comfortable, and convenient streets within which to walk, bike, or roll-on, right? Because this promotes not just more physical activity, which, you know, as Genevieve is spoken to, has multiple physical health benefits and mental health benefits and all the other plethora of benefits that we discussed. But it also has– like from a social perspective.
In addition to what you discussed, Genevieve, you know, it increases things like a sense of community or happiness, right? Our sense of public safety and then– has environmental benefits. So like if you're walking your kid to school or the local playground or for a playdate, or even just to run a quick errand, that means you're not getting in your car, which has serious implications for greenhouse gas and air quality and just kind of overall climate change mitigation. Which is especially important to support sort of a more brighter, sustainable future for our kids, right? So I think it's kind of– you have to really think about the– it's a both-and situation. And yeah, getting outdoors is important, and from an urban design perspective, we have to facilitate it both in parks and public spaces and then regular everyday streets.
[MUSIC INTERLUDE - SPONSOR BREAK]
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: At Pandemic Parenting, we're committed to sharing our expertise and research in ways that are immediately accessible and useful to families. As part of our efforts to sustain and expand this work, Amanda and I are also available for virtual speaking engagements at your business organization, PTO, and more. We want to help you and those you work with grow with and raise your children with the chance to do so in an environment that fosters and supports your mental health. Some of the topics we speak on include parenting during the pandemic, the impact of trauma on children and families, children's development, the mental health impact of COVID-19 on employees, and more. If you or your organization are interested in potentially collaborating with us. Please reach out for availability and pricing through the request to speaker form on our website at www.pandemic-parent.org/contact.
[MUSIC ENDS - END SPONSOR BREAK]
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: OK, so we've already touched on this a little bit with, you know? I was saying how lucky I felt that I had a backyard during all these quarantines that I had to do. And a lot of people had to do the same quarantine without any access to outdoor space. And I can't even imagine. So I know in general, the COVID-19 pandemic has really laid bare or exacerbated all sorts of physical and social inequities that exist even with respect to like who is more likely to get COVID or have negative outcomes from it so– but one of these relates to place into the neighborhood and who gets to take advantage of outdoor time versus who does not? And how the importance of that has become evident to more people, I think. So let's talk about that for a few minutes. Mariela, do you want to start us off?
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: Yeah, yeah. So if you don't mind, I'll talk a little bit about some of the studies that have been done in this regard both by myself and others last year. Throughout the pandemic, the trust for public land, they conducted a study that showed that in the 100 most populated cities, neighborhoods were more residents identified as black or Hispanic and Latinx American Indian, Alaskan Native or Asian American and Pacific Islander. So typical kinds of marginalized groups have access to an average of 44% less park acres than predominantly white neighborhoods. And in low-income neighborhoods, it was really similar, so they averaged 42% less park access per person than residents within high-income neighborhoods.
And so, considering that access to places where one could safely and comfortably socially distance in addition to kind of quarantine, right? That was key to mitigating the transmission of COVID. It still is in many parts of the world where the virus is still rampant. These inequitable disparities and access to quality public spaces is one of the reasons why we saw higher rates of transmission among marginalized communities. But the other sort of place-based reason why it was three to four times more, people of color were hospitalized or died from COVID here, here in the states preceded the pandemic so.
And this is something that we looked at with the City of Philadelphia over the course of the last year, and we were noticing that there's just, unfortunately, less funding for good quality urban design, including access to parks and paste spaces in vulnerable communities. And this has been tied to centuries of long racist planning and policies, which I won't get into here, but there's a litany of them. And this led to a poor quality urban design, which influences, you know, your ability to engage in healthier and safer behaviors that lead to higher rates of chronic diseases. And these are the same as COVID, comorbidities, obesity, asthma, lung disease, cardiovascular disease, and so on.
This made the vulnerable communities that much more vulnerable to COVID. But the thing that's important to also understand is that it's not just COVID, right? Because we can think, “oh well, that's just once in a lifetime pandemic, who cares, right?”
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Sure, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: Or it's these communities that have higher rates of floods and heatwaves and crime, and it's all related back to the quality of the built environment. And just to give you super-like data, geeky view of this– 'cause that's kind of my thing, so I put it in real numbers. I mentioned my company's state of place. We measure urban design. We have a score right from zero to 100. So just to kinda give you a sense, like an increase in five points on our score. So maybe like adding trees or wider sidewalks.
It meant one fewer COVID death. Well, an increase in 10 points, maybe getting rid of a traffic lane or five fewer people in the hospital. An increase in 20 points, so maybe adding a park or public Plaza means half a percentage less in positivity rates, which really starts to add up and then you know similarly an increase in 10 points on another health aspect, particularly with it tide to parks and public spaces, there is a reduction in half a degree in temperature, which also you know impacts our ability to socially distance safely, you know?
And in general, even just from a safety like public safety perspective, you know, places that are sort of below average on our scoring system, they had nine times the homicide rate than those with above-average quality. So what this is telling us is that places with lower quality urban design and in this case there also happened to be lower-income which had higher percentages of black residents, more lower educated, and, you know, had a higher percentage of folks who lacked access to a vehicle, right?
This tells us that these vulnerable communities that lack access to all of these aspects of urban amenities, it makes it harder to get safe harbor during the pandemic and certainly leads to healthier, safer lives prior to the pandemic. Or, in this case, unhealthier and unsafe for life, and certainly now. So what I'm hoping is that this is the fact that this has been brought to light, not just because of the pandemic, but because of in the states, the Black Lives Matter protests over the murder of George Floyd that this has changed the conversation around equity and how important places in our everyday lives.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Yeah, it's pretty startling to hear the numbers like that, you know, to really hear the raw numbers and how they relate to something that we, those of us anyway who aren't experts in this. A lot of the things that we don't necessarily notice on a day-to-day basis but can have a real impact on our lives and those of others.
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: To build on that, there's some data that has come out of Canada. It's the participation survey. It's a population-based survey in Canada, and they looked at activity and screen time and children in Canada, and they did also find that the impact of these pandemic restrictions on children activity levels wasn't affecting everybody equally, and they definitely saw these disparities as well. And some of the things that came out were that children that lived in detached homes had cohabitating parents, actually somewhat older parents, and owning a dog were actually more protected from these– the impact of the pandemic on their children, activity levels, And so, you know, when you start to see these kinds of things come out, and you know some of them, you know, the detached homes you know. So that goes back to our discussion with the yard, but this is also echoed in these population-based surveys of children during the pandemic.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Wow. So I– well, I'm not going to share that with my husband as another reason to get a dog, at least for now. But you know it’s true though–
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: It's not causal, Lindsay, so you know.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: But it is true though that you see, you know, that's one of the reasons I would say we're not getting one because I would look out the window and like the, you know, the harsh Canadian winters and see these people outside at 6:30 in the morning walking their dog like you don't have a choice. You know you have to do it. You have to get outside.
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: It's the kids, and the kids are [unintelligible].
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: So that's true, that's true. OK, so that's kind of, you know, a lot of somewhat sad and depressing stuff there. So what, which you know, I, I tend to gravitate towards, but I mean really important things to highlight. So what are some things that parents can do about this, right? Even if they don't have expertise in these areas, So, what can parents do in their own towns or their own neighborhoods to maybe encourage spaces that are more equitable– that better lend themselves to spending time outside?
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: Well, first, I just want to take a quick step back and think about a couple of different ways to think about what we mean about equity, right? 'Cause, that word is become more part of the conversation in the last year, which is super important, but it can mean different things in different contexts. So if you think about, you know– first of all, just kind of from an accessible like physically accessible places, right?
So one way to think about it is, you know, kind of person reasonably gets to a public space, or more, generally, kind of, does your neighborhood have kind of supportive, healthy, supportive quality, early design, right? But then separately. And this is kind of not as obvious maybe, is that, you know, is the space inclusive, and so while some folks might be able to get to the public space, physically speaking, they might not feel welcome there or so for me– maybe you have an autistic child, and a playground just isn't designed for that, or you have a child with a physical disability, and there's a raised Plaza with no ramp, right?
Even though that's totally illegal with the JDA, but just an example, you know? Or maybe you're a person of color, and you don't feel like you belong in a space, but partially because of who's there and how the space is designed, and what kinds of activities it does or does not support. So I think that both of these examples of potential inequities are relevant in COVID 'cause you know one like does the most vulnerable communities can't access these places physically and then even measures that were put in place. Some cities create more public space, maybe they closed some streets to traffic, or they had outdoor dining. They weren't sincerely the most welcoming or even accessible or safe for people of color, as many advocates have pointed out.
So, taking that all context into mind, there's a few things that parents can do. First, begin to take notice of this, right? So it's like, I teach people how to be– how to do advanced people watching, right? So, things that think about the spaces that you're going to with your children you know? Who's there and who's not there in that public space and think about why– why that might be and they think this is particularly important for kids, because you know kids don't only benefit from public spaces, but exposure to diverse people with it with different needs and different preferences and perspectives within those spaces, right?
So I think, you know, with this in mind, you know parents can become allies and advocates for better public spaces. They can get involved and fight for more equitable funding of parks and public spaces throughout the city, you know? And one of these mechanisms is to think through how does funding get done in my neighborhood. Often in the US, it's tied to hyperlocal property tax, and then if you think about– but if it's a low-income neighborhood. They don't have much property tax to fund that– so, you know, can we change that system?
And what can parents do to drive that change? And also understanding that you know it might impact the funding for public schools, right? So 'cause they're often tied to that same sort of. So being able to say yes, we should have more equitable funding. It shouldn't be tied to the property taxes that I pay for. One other very concrete idea is just that trust for public land that I mentioned; they've been a great leader or an advocate around the need for more green time, if you will, and certainly more equitable access to that green time. And they have a couple of ways.
There’s a new bill called the Parks, Jobs and Equity Act, and it's meant to be a $500 million emergency investment to bring more parks to especially vulnerable communities, so you can write your Congressperson, and they have a little form that you can do on their website, and they've also created an equitable community fund if you want to directly sort of support that with donations and things like that.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: That's awesome, very actionable items there. Thank you.
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: I think one of the most effective things that a person can do, that a parent can do is to get to know their neighbors, and so if you go out and you talk to your neighbors, you get to know them. You then you build trust, they build trust with you, then you have all can have all eyes looking out, right? So when you send your kids outside to play, you don't necessarily have to be out there with them if you know that, you know, Mrs. Johnson down the street is going to have you know who's retired is going to kind of keep an eye out. Make sure the kids aren't getting in trouble or make sure nothing is, you know that they're and and you you can trust you can trust your neighbors.
I think that building that sense of community and it can allow for that in that village to form and also begin to do more advocacy in terms of asking your city for the slow street sign, so that's been something that's been pretty common here in LA during the pandemic and I know it's happened elsewhere. I'm not sure to what extent, but that if you reach out to your city that they and their transportation department and say we want to have a slow street sign in as Pasadena, CA. Where I live, they'll come and set that right in the middle of the street and it and it and it's it, it says like “slow down” like “children at play” and, you know, and that can create you know that that opportunity for you to feel a little safer to have your kids outside. And so those are some things that I've seen here and love.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Yeah, that's much better than my method of just screaming at people if they're going too fast down my street. That makes a lot more sense, yeah.
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: You just create your own, sign there Lindsay, you just do, you know, like they call that tactical urbanism, you just kind of tree your own design within your street.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: I mean to be honest, like I kind of did that in Miami like I had a lot of things I wanted to put on that sign and none of them were nice [laughing].
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: We've been talking about things that are at the policy level or at your neighborhood level, but at the individual or family level, there's things that parents can do that might be quite easy, you know, that would be just a simple little change, and so if that is if you're looking for summer camps, choosing ones that have more outdoor time, you know some of them are very indoor focused. That could be when you're doing gardening or chores outside. Have your kids out there either plain or even better, doing it with you and get them to work, or raking or mowing lawns if they're old enough? Or just helping you know here and there with the garden.
And you know, family walks obviously are a really good way to spend time together and build that family closeness as well as being active and being outside. So, there's a lot of traditional indoor type of things that can be done outside. And this might be when your child is doing homework or reading. Have them go sit outside under a tree and do that; they're flexible. Kids can lie down on their stomach and work, and that's one thing that was just I was, so it's been so exciting for me to see as someone who's interested in outdoor time and kids play outside is that schools that had the flexibility to start doing spent having kids spend more time outside did during the pandemic, and so the school that our son goes to.
I was so pleasantly surprised that they were trying to keep kids outside about 70% of the day, so kids were with their math workbooks sitting under trees and working on that and doing their grammar and English and spelling and just kind of carrying it around and reading outside, you know? And this and obviously we're in Southern California, so you have to be aware that this was, you know, this was April and May and June, so you know, not the heart of when it would have been winter anyway, but so having kids do things, art puzzles, games, and sort of being indoors if you can figure out how to move them out. If that means you just bring your laptop and sit outside and work outside, and they're just sitting outside doing a puzzle, then that can be better than all being inside.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: I think it really has opened our eyes to how many things can be done outside, and I've been amazed at how much creativity communities have had to come up with things that are fun and, you know, kid-friendly but are still outside and still socially distanced. And I think my absolute favorite of those was the guy in our neighborhood who was doing the Halloween trick or treating. He was shooting the candy out of a leaf blower like in the driveway.
Which I don't know if that's recommended, but yeah, but I mean even simple things like even just eating outside. I know, like, there's plenty of research to show that family mealtime, you know? Having family mealtime together is so important, but that can also be a good, you know, half an hour spent outside together. So yeah, no, thank you for those reminders, so. And also for the reminder that Genevieve has actually no weather in Southern California.
And that some of us now live with seasons, and you know right now, it's summer, but you know, for some of us anyway, it’ll be cold before we know it. So what would you say to parents who wonder whether it's worth it? Like you know, right now, the sun, the bug spray, the heat and the sweating and pretty soon you know the boots and the gloves and the snow pants and all of that like is it worth it? What would you say to them, you know, like, “oh, I don't want to go through all those things to get my kids outside?”
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: It's pretty obvious. Yes, it's worth it, given all those mental and physical health benefits to your kids. And so you know, there's ways to do it that you can– it can be safer and avoid some of the hassles. So you know, especially in warmer climates, so avoiding the peak UV times of the day. So avoiding 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM when the risk of sunburn is the highest, can you know that can be one way to do it, but still can go outside in the morning or later in the afternoon.
So there are ways around it if there's ways to build shade, and this is also something you can advocate for at your school or at your local playground, but putting in shade structures, shade canopies, even just hanging up shade in your own yard. If you don't have a lot of trees, it's a pretty straightforward thing you can do. Just string up, you know, some kind of cloth and you have instant shade, so I think there's some simple things that can be done, that can help us circumvent some of these challenges, that seem more difficult or seem insurmountable.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: And I think you sent me this, and I'm actually part of it too. There's the 1000 hours outside Facebook group that you can join, and I'm sure lots of other things like that are right with it, which give you fun ideas for things like how to get your kids outside. For us, when we really hit a rut with that last year, it was geocaching. Like discovering what geocaching was and you know, like sort of like Pokémon Go, but you're looking for little buried treasures, and just, you know? Creative ways like that. OK, so I guess we do try to end on a on a happy note if we can usually come so I if I had a final question for you both, it would be what do you think we've learned from this pandemic in terms of, you know, quote, unquote green time, and what lessons are you hoping that people will take away from it?
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: I think the– one of the biggest eye-openers that happened during the pandemic was that somehow indoors became kind of bad in a scary place, right? And because of the risk of viral transmission and exposure and so outdoors, had this connotation of being safer and and and certain data suggests that or support that, right? And it was really interesting and fascinating to me that you would see public health recommendations that are very concrete about if you're indoors, this is what you need to do, and you may need to wear masks.
And if you're outdoors, though, then there's a different set of recommendations. And that indoor-outdoor contrast became obviously salient on many levels, and so people started moving things outside. So there were family gatherings and my family– I grew up in Minnesota, where it's really cold, and I didn't go back there. But I was like I couldn't. But certainly, there was lots of stories about family gatherings over the holidays that were outside with heat, blankets, and heat labs and around like campfires and just moving everything outside so people could still be together, right? So that was worth it, you know?
And so it's a really interesting thing. I think that's such an eye-opener about indoor-outdoor. I do think that's going to continue on for a while, you know? As we still struggle with outbreaks and that so, thinking of bringing the world outdoors more, although it may be a hassle, I think that there's a lot of additional benefits beyond just the risk reduced risk of viral transmission.
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: Absolutely, Genevieve. And I was thinking about like– we had our New Year's Eve gathering with– I've been staying with my in-laws. It's a long story. But with my brother-in-law came with his girlfriend and we were outside in the garage with like our heater, you know, like not– well, sort of had like a little heater that we brought outside and like you know, multiple blankets and things like that, but from my perspective, it’s just been such a delight to hear regular people that would never have talked about urban design, talk about urban design even though they don't say that it's urban design, you know?
And Genevieve is right there with me. Like the last 20 years, we've been advocating for, you know, better urban design because it has so many multiple benefits, so for me, that's really quite exciting, and you know those conversations. It's not just talk, right? There– It's translated into action. Cities have created these open streets, and they've closed off the streets and kind of rethinking the relationship between streets and people and cars and what you know that should actually be moving forward. So there's many cities that are considering adopting some of the open streets that were created more permanently. And so, so to me, that's really exciting.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: I think that in many ways, hopefully, the pandemic has been kind of a catalyst for and maybe move things a little bit faster in some ways for some of the stuff that you both have been advocating for and working on for a long time. So hopefully, we'll see more of that.
Dr. Genevieve Dunton: I guess I was thinking of the question you had asked earlier. There are mentioned ahead of time about people being concerned– if they're not really an outdoorsy person. Yeah, you know if I'm not– if I'm in, you know I'm not, I don't– I'm not like a serious hiker, camper, rock climber, you know. That person may have initially had that type of connotation in their mind about if you're going to be an outdoorsy person, you have to do that kind of thing, and I think that we've seen in the pandemic that that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. I think what we've been talking about here today is being outdoors can mean as simple as having a picnic with a glass of wine outside. You know it doesn't have to involve a 25-mile hike across a swamp, so I think that’s good.
Hopefully that it's been really exciting to see the number of people in, you know, in my community and in my social networks that have been doing more stuff outdoors that have been ongoing on more walks and hikes and and not not long ones short ones, but that because everything else was closed down. There weren't any other options, you know, and we'll see if that sticks, or you know, or maybe not. But at least it's opened people's eyes to some of these other opportunities for them.
Dr. Mariela Alfonzo: Cities sometimes have these kind of preconceived notions about what they are or not. I remember the city of Copenhagen. It's been talked about a lot in our design circles transformed into, you know, a city that was very restrictive with cars and people like to lead their lives out outdoors more. But in the beginning, they're like– well, we're not Italians. We don't have coffee outside. We don't do those kinds of outdoor dining experiences. And yet you know, thereby the power of design to kind of facilitate and shape the possibility of these kinds of behaviors happening.
They actually were indeed a city that liked to gather outdoors, and I saw that when I was living in Oslo – it's freezing there – and they just lead their lives outside all the time. It didn't matter what the temperature was, and it was a combination of design and just really good clothing, you know? So I think that the pandemic, you know, has kind of opened our eyes like we can be more of an outdoor city, even if you're in, you know, Santa Fe, New Mexico, or, you know, Winnipeg, Canada.
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: I mean, it's funny, but like, people ask me all the time, like “how could you move from Miami to Canada?” and like– it's funny we actually spend a lot more time outside up here than we did there. Like when we were more worried about the heat, or you know, the sun with the kids and stuff so, yeah. Well, thank you both so much. This has been amazing and very enlightening for me in terms of thinking about what issues to be working on in my own town in my own neighborhood, so thank you.
[MUSIC INTERLUDE]
Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Pandemic Parenting Podcast. Make sure to hit, follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever platform you're listening on to be notified of future episodes. We'd also love to connect with you on social media. Look for our blue and yellow logo when you search Pandemic Parenting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube, and you'll find us or follow the links in the show notes.
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Dr. Lindsay Malloy: Thanks for listening, and we hope you can join us next time.
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