Nature Routines of Children as Leverage Point for Sustainable Social-Ecological

Connecting childhood and to design sustainable civilizations in the human habitat

Matteo Giusti

Licentiate thesis in Science

Stockholm Resilience Centre

Stockholm University

May 2016

Abstract

Strong sustainability requires enhanced knowledge and understanding of complex social-ecological interactions, but it also implies a ‘novel’ conceptualization of the relationship between humans and nature, one in which individuals perceive themselves as embedded members of the Biosphere. The aim of this Licentiate thesis is to investigate the validity of a strategy that is centered on designing the urban green infrastructure to nurture such human-nature relationship in children’s attitudes. The research is framed by spatial cognition, conservation psychology, and social-ecological sustainability and it focuses on the validity of this strategy. Hence, the Licentiate analyzes how reoccurring experiences of nature that are situated in the everyday habitat (i.e. nature routines) affect personal human-nature attitudes and how these can be implemented as leverage points to change social-ecological systems using sustainable urbanism. Paper 1 tests the assumed link between the nature routines in Stockholm and preschool children’s development of cognitive and emotional affinity to nature. The results show that nature-rich routines over a period of four years are significantly correlated with the strength of preschooler’s affinity with nature. Paper 2 uses a mixed methods approach to evaluate changes in Connection To Nature (CTN) in 10 years olds who partake in a project of nature conservation. The results of Paper 2 show that there is an evaluative gap between theory and practice in connecting children with nature that impedes the evaluation of how children’s CTN changes over short periods of time and that impedes the creation of an evaluative framework for nature experiences. Paper 3 considers these empirical results in theorizing an approach to sustainable based on social-ecological sustainability that includes CTN. In order to overcome existing limitations Paper 3 presents the concept of cognitive affordances as a theoretical tool to embed cognitive and emotional attitudes towards nature into the design of urban spaces. All combined these papers provide valid evidence that nature routines in , especially for children, can be a significant leverage point to enable future sustainable civilizations.

1 Keywords

Nature routines, strong sustainability, sustainable social-ecological urbanism, connection to nature, children

2 Table of contents

List of papers ...... 5

Contribution ...... 5

The sustainable urbanism of new generations ...... 6

Aim of the Licentiate Thesis ...... 7

Combining theories ...... 8

Connection To Nature (CTN) ...... 8

Affordances and Situated cognition ...... 9

The gap of “Nature Routines” ...... 11

Summary of papers ...... 12

Paper 1 – Nature routines and affinity with the biosphere: a case study of preschool children in Stockholm ...... 12

Paper 2 – Evaluating a significant life experience: ...... 14

How nature conservation connects, or not, children to nature ...... 14

Paper 3- Cognitive affordances in sustainable urbanism: contributions of space syntax and spatial cognition ...... 14

Discussing results ...... 16

The ‘evaluative gap’ ...... 16

A systemic evaluative framework for nature routines ...... 19

Final remarks ...... 20

Acknowledgments ...... 22

References ...... 23

3 Table of figures

Figure 1. Models of weak and strong sustainability ...... 6

Figure 2. Theoretical representation of the interdependencies between affordances, situations, and the urban design...... 10

Figure 3. Location of Paper 1 (P1), Paper 2 (P2), and Paper 3 (P3) in the learning cycle with current status (green: published, yellow: manuscript) ...... 12

Figure 4. Representation of nature-rich and nature-poor routines in an urban context. 13

Figure 5. The Bullerby model for describing four hypothetical types and levels of child- friendly environments as in (Kyttä 2006) ...... 17

Figure 6. Location of P1, P2, P3, and potential future research papers A, B, and C in the learning cycle with current status (green: published, yellow: manuscript, orange: data collection ongoing, red: data collection to initiate) ...... 18

Figure 7. An example of the ANGELO framework to assess ‘obesinogenic’ environments in Pacific Island Communities as in (Swinburn, Egger, and Raza 1999) .. 19

4 List of papers

1. Giusti, Matteo, Stephan Barthel, and Lars Marcus. (Published) 2014. “Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool Children in Stockholm.” Children, Youth and the Environments 24 (3): 16–42.

2. Giusti, Matteo and Stephan Barthel. (Manuscript) “Evaluating significant experiences of nature conservation activities on children’s connection to nature”. (for submission in Environment and Behavior)

3. Marcus, Lars, Matteo Giusti and Stephan Barthel (in press) “Cognitive Affordances in Sustainable Urbanism: Contributions of Space Syntax and Spatial Cognition.” Journal of Urban Design, 2016. DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2016.1184565

Contribution

1. Idea generation. Research design. Data collection. Data analysis. Paper arrangement. Writing. Review process.

2. Idea generation. Research design. Data collection. Data analysis. Paper arrangement. Writing.

3. Joint idea generation. Literature review. Theory development. Writing.

5 The sustainable urbanism of new generations

The scientific literature that calls for a “reconnection with the biosphere” in resilience research suggests a radical shift in how is conceived (Folke et al. 2011; Williams and Millington 2004). The shift is from weak to strong sustainability and it is a paradigm change that has revolutionary consequences for how we envision a sustainable civilization (Figure 1). Indeed, strong sustainability suggests that at the core of sustainable modern societies lays not only better understanding of complex social- ecological interactions, and the following institutionalization of national and international agreements to limit ecological overexploitation (Steffen et al. 2015; Rockstrom et al. 2009), but also the realization, acceptance, and embracement of a ‘novel’ form of human-nature relationship; one in which humankind is embedded in and part of nature (Hughes et al. 2013).

Figure 1. Models of weak and strong sustainability

Similarly to other accepted shared assumptions in modern societies; e.g. one can own land, time can be paid, growth is good, money has real meaning, etc., the assumption that humans are distinguished animals in the natural world has been highlighted by different disciplines as the philosophical root of our unsustainable trajectory of development (Vining, Merrick, and Price 2008; Armstrong and Botzler 1993; Orr 2002; White Jr 1967; Pyle 2003). Despite a multitude of different approaches and concerns, an increasingly unified field of research, ranging from environmental and conservation psychology (Saunders and Myers 2003; Gifford 2014), to landscape management (Meyfroidt 2013; Lewicka 2011), biological conservation (Miller 2006; Simaika and

6 Samways 2010) and social-ecological system research (Folke et al. 2011; Fischer et al. 2015), shares the normative goal of reconnecting people and nature (Pyle 2003). “How people identify themselves with the natural environment and the relationship they form with nature” (Restall and Conrad 2015) has become the academic interest of many. This licentiate joins this academic community by researching how cognitive and emotional psychological traits, more or less in line with strong sustainability, emerge in children.

Aim of the Licentiate Thesis

The aim of this Licentiate thesis is to investigate the validity of a strategy to cherish sustainable social-ecological systems. This strategy is centered on designing the urban green infrastructure needed for children to feel embedded in and part of nature. The potential impact of this strategy for future sustainable civilizations lies in modifying the everyday background in which most people live, i.e. cities (United Nations 2007), and including influential factors known to stimulate long-term commitment to environmental protection, i.e. childhood experiences of nature (Chawla 1999). In the following papers this thesis aims to establish if this strategy has potential and how it can be integrated as a leverage point in sustainable urban design.

7 Combining theories

In order to explore the main aim of the Licentiate, i.e. a strategy for social-ecological sustainability, I combine theories of environmental psychology, to understand how children connect with nature, with theories of spatial cognition, to understand how space can be designed to affect emotions and cognition. By combining these theories on common ontological ground I identify a research approach existing at the intersection of urban design, sustainable social-ecological research, and environmental psychology. Such gap has been also recently highlighted by Sörqvist (Sörqvist 2016) who considers it “an approach largely neglected”, but with the potential to ease some of the ecological grand challenges humankind is facing.

Connection To Nature (CTN)

Connection To Nature (CTN) is herein utilized in general terms since conclusive agreement on the psychological definition of this concept as a whole has not been yet achieved (Beery and Wolf-Watz 2014; Van der Werff, Steg, and Keizer 2013; Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2011; Ignatow 2006). With CTN the existing literature refers to a trait of one’s personality (Leary, Tipsord, and Tate 2001) that represent a degree on one’s connection, or identification, with nature. CTN is co-created by a bundle of cognitive and emotional attributes related to one’s conceptualized human-nature relationship. These psychological attributes range from empathy towards animals, sense of responsibility for nature, sense of oneness, and enjoyment of nature (Cheng and Monroe 2012) to the all-encompassing love for nature (Perkins 2010). As any other personality trait, CTN is considered a component of one’s identity (Clayton 2003), both consciously and unconsciously (P. W. Schultz et al. 2004; P. Schultz and Tabanico 2007), directly linked to environmental concern and sensitivity (Nisbet, Zelenski, and Murphy 2008; P. W. Schultz 2000; Chawla 1998; Peterson 1982). Despite the acknowledged attitude-behavior gap (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002), CTN conclusively showed predictive capacity towards individual pro-environmental behaviors like using public transportation (Hunecke et al. 2001), mindful energy use (Black, Stern, and Elworth 1985), recycling (Guagnano, Stern, and Dietz 1995), and environment-friendly buying behaviors (Thogersen 2005). In other words, CTN indicates how one’s concept of being a human overlaps with the concept of being nature similarly to the model of

8 strong sustainability in social-ecological system research. As a matter of fact, CTN is also measured exactly in these terms as Inclusion of Nature in Self (P. W. Schultz 2002).

Changing CTN to accommodate a more nature-inclusive mindset can be a hard task in adults (Kaiser et al. 2014), but children’s human-nature relation is quite malleable and indeed sensitive to aging (Lieflander and Bogner 2014). Nature experiences during childhood have indeed an important role in explaining CTN (Cheng and Monroe 2012; Kahn Jr and Kellert 2002; Van der Werff, Steg, and Keizer 2014) and more specifically in motivating nature conservationists to devote their life to protect the environment (Chawla 2007). But, where did these nature experiences occur? An experience of nature unsurprisingly has to occur in a natural environment. So, essential to the provision of these experiences is the landscape that allows them. As the most common human habitat is now the urban landscape (United Nations 2007), the intentional design of the green urban infrastructure has become the everyday provider of nature experiences for most current and future children. However, the neat separation of human and natural habitats implemented in most urban design makes such human- nature interactions worryingly scarce in both quantity and quality (Soga and Gaston 2016). So, will the mundane interaction with the urban green infrastructure allow city children to be the next nature conservationists? With this question in mind we now focus on understanding how the design of space can affect emotions and cognition, or more precisely how space can be seen as part of one’s emotional and cognitive system.

Affordances and Situated cognition

There is a specific approach that is worth describing to understand how space is conceived in this Licentiate (Figure 2). This approach is inherent in the concept of affordance. “The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes” (Gibson 1979, 127). In plain English, an affordance is non- deterministic “preconditions for activity” (Greeno 1994). Affordances are relations between the abilities of an organism to perceive the environmental features of a specific place in a specific time and then to actualize them (Chemero 2003; Heft 2001). Affordances are then not only relations between situations and behaviors (i.e. the actualization of what the environment offers), but because they begin with perception they are proxies for all psychological dynamics. For instance, a wall can be seen as ‘fun’ in the eyes of a rock climber, but appear as a plain surface with no apparent function in

9 the eyes of a person with no climbing abilities. Hence, because of different pre-acquired abilities these two people will have different emotional reaction to the same environment and potentially different actualized behaviors. This is where the separation between body, mind, and space cease to be assumed. The cognitive, emotional, and behavioral attributes depend on the attributes of the environment at any given time (Chemero 2009). “[T]he agent and environment […] form a unified, nondecomposable system, which is to say that they form a system whose behavior cannot be modeled, even approximately, as a set of separate parts” (Chemero 2009, 31). Hence, the sets of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional affordances that a space allows are relational qualities that can qualify the atmosphere of a space. For instance, certain sets of affordances allow environments to be categorized as ‘children-friendly’ (Broberg, Kyttä, and Fagerholm 2013; Nordstrom 2010) whereas others as ‘obesogenic’ (Kirk, Penney, and McHugh 2010; Swinburn, Egger, and Raza 1999). That is, certain affordances welcome children’s playing and safety whereas others enable routines that over time facilitate behavioral, cognitive, and emotional traits that lead to obesity. Over time then these reoccurring children-space relations have the potential to mold child’s physical identity as much as his or her personality. This is the ontology upon which this Licentiate explores how to design spaces for children that nurture CTN. In here, I consider cities, nature, and people’s emotional and cognitive reactions as a nondecomposable system, much in line also with the concept of social-ecological system of strong sustainability (Walker and Salt 2006).

Figure 2. Theoretical representation of the interdependencies between affordances, situations, and the urban design.

10 The gap of “Nature Routines”

For the last 30 years, the dominant models that aimed at explaining environmental- friendly behaviors relied on a linear cascade of psychological events triggered by more or less conscious attributes (Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002). In so doing, most existing research have investigated the emergence of positive environmental attitudes by surveying psychological traits without considering the spatial background as a determining factor (Beery and Wolf-Watz 2014; Chawla 2007). On the other hand, space also has a social logic that has been largely neglected in modern (Hillier and Hanson 1984; Gehl 2010) and a cognitive logic that has been unrecognized until very recently (Portugali 2011). It is the intersections of these two underexplored areas of research that this Licentiate uses in combination with social-ecological system research.

Similar research in the field or urban design exists in the form of biophilic design (Beatley 2010; Kellert, Heerwagen, and Mador 2008), but with few exceptions (Tidball 2012; Tidball and Krasny 2010) its focus has been mostly in internal design, distant from the goals of social-ecological sustainability. Also, the founding theory that sees biophilia as a genetic disposition poorly integrates the possibility to modify such human- nature relationship (Kellert and Wilson 1993). This Licentiate indeed explores how urban affordances have the potential to change and shape CTN in line with strong sustainability, which stands in contrast with the biophilia hypothesis. In this effort, I coin the term ‘nature routines’, which is defined as the reoccurring experiences of nature that are situated in the everyday habitat. It is important to notice that the concept of nature routines embeds the spatial dimension of nature affordances, but also a reoccurring temporal dimension. I then consider children’s ‘nature routines’ an important leverage point for the sustainable organization of future social-ecological systems (Meadows 2008). This Licentiate aims to explore if this consideration is valid.

11 Summary of papers

The null-hypothesis of the Licentiate thesis is that spatial accessibility of nature routines in cities is not related to children’s cognitive and emotional association with nature (Figure 2). Paper 1 begins by testing such null-hypothesis and examining the assumed link between the nature routines that an urban landscape affords to children, and children’s development of cognitive and emotional attributes related to CTN. Paper 2 evaluates children’s participation in an urban project of nature conservation. This is a situation that over a period of eight weeks might have greatly affected the children- nature relationship. Paper 3 elaborates previous empirical and theoretical understanding to discuss an approach to sustainable urban design that includes CTN.

Figure 3. Location of Paper 1 (P1), Paper 2 (P2), and Paper 3 (P3) in the learning cycle with current status (green: published, yellow: manuscript)

Paper 1 – Nature routines and affinity with the biosphere: a case study of preschool children in Stockholm

The goal of Paper 1 is to falsify the hypothesis that the spatial configuration of the urban green infrastructure has no influence over how children develop CTN. The research question is “do nature-poor routines in urban areas correlate with reduced

12 CTN in preschool children?” The study combines methods of spatial analysis, with ad- hoc games to assess emotional and cognitive affinity with nature in preschoolers (5 years old). The spatial analysis measures the degree of accessibility to nature experiences from the locations of all municipal preschools in Stockholm using existing GIS maps about how space is used and perceived (Ståhle 2006). With such information we then rank all preschools according to the degree of nature experiences they have access to. Consequently, we perform correlations analysis to test if accessibility to nature routines, measured as accessibility to 4 consecutive years of nature experiences occurring during pedagogical outdoor activities, matches the results for emotional and cognitive affinity with the biosphere.

Figure 4. Representation of nature-rich and nature-poor routines in an urban context.

The results reveal that children with preschool routines closer to nature are 17% (p < .05) more capable to distinguish living from lifeless entities, to be empathetic for non- human life forms, and to be concerned for environmental degradation (Figure 4). Additionally, these children are also 15% more capable to perceive the harmful effects of environmental pollution and to recognize the role of ecological resources for the production of everyday objects. Despite being only of correlational kind, these results provide assurance that urban space has had influential effects on the development of cognitive and emotional attributes related to CTN. The spatial configuration of nature experiences in Stockholm seems to have affected over time how children conceive their human-nature relationship.

13 Paper 2 – Evaluating a significant life experience: How nature conservation connects, or not, children to nature

The role of ‘significant life experiences’ during childhood in shaping environmental sensitivity has been empirically recognized with retrospective research (Chawla 1998; Chawla 1999), but such research has been confronted with many limitations mostly related to its indirect methods of assessment (Gough 1999). The goal of Paper 2 is to evaluate the direct participation of 4th graders in what could be arguably seen as the most formative activity to motivate nature conservationists: nature conservation itself. The research question is consequently “how does participating in a project of salamander conservation change children’s CTN?” The qualitative (i.e. interviews) and quantitative methods (i.e. FlexiTwins, INS, CNI, Salamander Empathy, WTP) 1 implemented in the study reveal contrasting results. Whereas interviews show an increased appreciation for salamanders, nature, and in general, for the activity of nature conservation per se, the employed numeric methods have not evaluated such attitudinal change. We propose that participating in the project has shifted children’s life-trajectory towards one with richer engagement with nature, but also that such trajectory cannot be numerically evaluated with the methodologies employed. Besides considering the dynamics of how children’s CTN emerge from nature experiences the results of Paper 2 highlight one critical point: there is an evaluative gap between theory and practice in connecting children to nature that impedes the evaluation of how children’s CTN change after experiencing nature-related activities.

Paper 3- Cognitive affordances in sustainable urbanism: contributions of space syntax and spatial cognition

Paper 3 analyses how the current model of sustainable urban design can include cognitive and emotional features into the spatial configurations of the human habitat. In this conceptual paper the goal is to explore how the theories of spatial cognition and CTN highlight points of divergence between the existing framework of sustainable urbanism, social-ecological sustainability, and CTN. A hypothetical research

1 FlexiTwins is an Implicit Association Test as in (P. W. Schultz 2006), INS refers to the Inclusion of Nature in Self as in (P. W. Schultz 2002), CNI refers to the Connection to Nature Index as in (Cheng and Monroe 2012), Salamander Empathy refers to a modified version of the empathy subscale of CNI to address specifically empathy towards salamanders, and WTP refers to Willingness To Pay as in (Brown et al. 1996).

14 question for this paper could be “how does the current model of sustainable urban design considers the influence that the urban green infrastructure has on inhabitants’ psychological human-nature relationship?” The theoretical analysis results in a list of contrasting points in the existing framework of sustainable urban design: (i) that urban space is not yet understood and organized as a system, (ii) there is an imbalance between top-down and bottom-up approaches in the creation of sustainable urban spaces, and (iii) the instrumental human-space interaction central to the current model of sustainable urbanism is insufficient to nurture CTN and hence long-term sustainability commitments. In order to overcome these limitations Paper 3 presents the concept of cognitive affordances, direct extension of the concept of physical affordance proposed by Gibson (Gibson 1977), as a theoretical tool to embed cognitive and emotional attitudes towards nature into the design of urban spaces. We then invite researchers and practitioners in and design to engage in creating a framework for sustainable urbanism more aligned with the understanding of strong sustainability and spatial cognition.

15 Discussing results

The results presented in this Licentiate provide sufficient empirical evidence to consider designing nature routines in cities a valid strategy to encourage future sustainable civilizations. However, these results are visibly insufficient to guide the implementation of this strategy. In order to identify some of the critical knowledge gaps that currently impedes the operationalization of nature routines I present below two examples of existing research that have operationalized analogous theoretical premises into valuable frameworks: the Bullerby model (Kyttä 2006; Broberg, Kyttä, and Fagerholm 2013) and the ANGELO framework (Swinburn, Egger, and Raza 1999; Kirk, Penney, and McHugh 2010). These two examples provide two complementary aspects that are still missing to correctly operationalize nature routines in the human habitat.

The ‘evaluative gap’

The Bullerby model envisioned by Kyttä (2006) uses the theory of affordance to establish whether an environment is more or less child-friendly (Figure 5). In here, independent mobility and actualization of child-friendly affordances in “any ‘normal’ everyday environment” (Kyttä 2006, 141) are the mediators that categorize environments as more or less child-friendly (Figure 5). Prior to this categorisation, the Bullerby model relies on a list of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral affordances to evaluate if the design of an environment is appropriate for children’s development. This list does not exist for the affordances that nurture children’s CTN. This is the first missing piece of the puzzle to operationalize nature routines. Paper 1 has tested accessibility to nature experiences as a mediator for CTN and the results confirm that over a period of 4 years the different actualization of nature affordances in children’s everyday environment correlates with children’s CTN. However, even if Paper 1 shows that nature routines are not spatially homogenous in Stockholm, its research design does not allow to investigate into which kind of nature routine resulted to be the most formative for children’s CTN.

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Figure 5. The Bullerby model for describing four hypothetical types and levels of child- friendly environments as in (Kyttä 2006)

In an attempt to further explore which nature experiences nurture CTN over time, Paper 2 has investigated what could be considered an iconic life experience to encourage children’s CTN, i.e. taking part in a nature conservation project. The results of Paper 2 highlight one important point; there is a gap in how to evaluate CTN in relation to the actualization of nature affordances. Paper 2 has selected a set of existing methods used to assess CTN to evaluate the effects of participating in the conservation project. None of these methods have shown the capability to distinguish a child who participated from a child who did not. The interviews showed that participating made ‘saving life’ a part of children’s everyday habits, it changed the instinctive emotional reactions they have towards animals and drawing from other studies (Cosquer, Raymond, and Prevot-Julliard 2012) this is likely to contribute to self-learning processes that will shape children’s future life path (Chawla and Cushing 2007). However, leading

17 a project of nature conservation, overcoming emotional barriers, and being empowered as experts in nature conservation have resulted in no significantly measurable implicit, explicit, or intentional attitudinal change. The quantitative methods employed have shown little accuracy and potential to evaluate real-world situations that operate in short time frames. So, the problem of creating a list of nature affordances to define child- connecting environments persists and it is linked to the lack of evaluative methods that can be utilized to quantify the effects of connecting nature experiences. In combination Paper 1 and Paper 2 highlight that the possibility to implement nature routines in cities is valid, but there is no valid method of evaluation to define which nature routines should be implemented. This is what we refer here as the ‘evaluative gap’.

Figure 6. Location of P1, P2, P3, and potential future research papers A, B, and C in the learning cycle with current status (green: published, yellow: manuscript, orange: data collection ongoing, red: data collection to initiate)

The first step to shed light over the evaluative gap is to perform a transdisciplinary review of how children connect with nature. This research effort explores which features of nature experiences promote CTN during childhood by reviewing the activities that practitioners employ in the field to ‘connect’ children with nature, and their own evaluative methods (Paper A). In addition, reviewing how different disciplines conceive the human-nature relationship (Paper B) will complement the insights given by Paper A and provide with more linkage points to close the gap between theory and practice

18 (Figure 6). I reckon this is a crucial phase to create an evaluative framework that enhances the process of measurements, goals, and verification of nature affordances that connect children to nature.

A systemic evaluative framework for nature routines

Similarly to the Bullerby model, the ANGELO framework also uses two mediators (i.e. food and physical activity) to categorize environments, but for a different purpose (Figure 6). The ANGELO framework is used to establish whether an environment is more or less ‘obesogenic’, that is, a list of attributes are defined to evaluate how an environment promotes obesity via high energy intakes and sedentary behaviors (Swinburn, Egger, and Raza 1999; Kirk, Penney, and McHugh 2010). This evaluative framework includes physical, economic, and sociocultural attributes across different spatial scales to characterize ‘obesogenic’ environment. The authors of the ANGELO framework recognize the need to focus on system-based interventions to “increase the rather modest impact of individual and public education programs” (Swinburn, Egger, and Raza 1999, 563). I reckon this systemic approach can also be used to ameliorate the rather modest impact of environmental education programs.

Figure 7. An example of the ANGELO framework to assess ‘obesinogenic’ environments in Pacific Island Communities as in (Swinburn, Egger, and Raza 1999)

The system-oriented approach underpinning the ANGELO framework resonates with the results of Paper 3 where we highlighted that the systemic understanding of space is poorly integrated in the current model of sustainable urban design. ‘Obesogenic’

19 environments have systemic properties that influence food intake and physical activities across scales, and so do ‘connecting’ environments. Knowledge about how to design natural environments that children to engage with nature exists already (Moore 2014), but it lacks guidelines beyond the specific configuration of the area of interest. A complete evaluative framework for nature routines has then to consider all contextual attributes that influence children’s CTN. The second phase to accomplish a systemic evaluative framework for nature routines is then to assess what influences nature routines in a real-world situation (Paper C). Paper C uses Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) to assess what are the positive and negative experiences spatially existing in Stockholm. The leading interest behind Paper C is to understand what and where are the nature routines in Stockholm, and what motivate them. This research effort will help recognizing what are the missing nature routines in cities and so finalize a framework to evaluate systemically what are the environmental attributes that define ‘connecting’ environments.

Final remarks

The separation between mind and the physical world is embedded in the current modus operandi of urban design, but as academics unfold a different ontology of human-space interaction (Portugali 2011; Gehl 2010; Hillier and Hanson 1984) more and more environments will be designed with properties that unify cognition, emotions, and behaviors. Designing emotional and cognitive affordances to connect children to nature in cities is not simply a matter of planning for ‘more trees’, but first and foremost aligning the process that generates urban forms with the assumptions of social- ecological sustainability (Andersson et al. 2014; Colding and Barthel 2013; Barthel et al. 2013). Space can be designed to enable and even require behaviors. Integrating nature routines in the design of cities means allowing the background of most everyday lives to act as a pedagogical medium in line with strong sustainability. Nurturing a sustainable human-nature relationship will then nudge drivers, feedbacks, rules, structure, and ultimately goals and purpose of future civilizations to be more conscious of humans’ position in the biosphere (Meadows 2008). Space-based approached can have great potential to tackle some of the grand challenges that humanity is facing (Sörqvist 2016) and their leverage points might be just the mundane events that constitutes the habits of everyday life.

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21 Acknowledgments

‘Acknowledging’ the amazing people I have around feels like a ‘lagom’ style of celebrating, which I cannot yet get used to. I believe I should acclaim and cheer such unique persons.

First and foremost, I applaud …for a long time… and a bit longer… my spectacular girlfriend Ellie. I owe you an infinite amount of gratitude, apologies, and love for disentangling my stressed and less-than-enjoyable moods always with a smile, a proof- reading, and a cake ready to comfort me. Thanks for fixing me!

Second. “HOORAY!!” to my Swedish supervisors Stephan and Lars who didn’t know they had to battle so fiercely against my stubbornness when they signed up. They don’t bake cakes for me, but they are always there when I need them; and only then (which goes nicely with my inexplicable desire for self-guidance). I don’t think I could have planned for a better relationship.

Third, but not in importance, “WOOOP WOOOP” to all my everyday friends! Thank you for reminding me over and over again that without wondering about screaming marmots and the social innovations of the interrobang, my life, as well as my research, would be poorer. You make my days.

Last, but not least, “THANKS!” to the SRC people to which I owe an apology for not being so involved as I wish, especially among the PhDs. Somehow, after more than 2 years into my PhD I still haven’t figure out how to stress a bit less about my work to feel comfortable in saying “Sure! I’ll do that!”

And then, it comes almost without saying. Gratitude to my family for accepting my distance and for believing I’m studying how to save the world.

22 References

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26 Changing World. Washington, D.C.: Island Pr. White Jr, Lynn. 1967. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science: 3–14. Williams, Colin C, and Andrew C Millington. 2004. “The Diverse and Contested Meanings of Sustainable Development.” The Geographical Journal 170 (2): 99–104.

27 Children, Youth and Environments 24(3), 2014

Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool Children in Stockholm

Giusti Matteo Stockholm Resilience Centre Stockholm University

Barthel Stephan Institute of Urban History and Stockholm Resilience Centre Stockholm University

Marcus Lars School of Architecture and the Built Environment KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Citation: Matteo, Giusti, Barthel Stephan and Marcus Lars (2014). “Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool Children in Stockholm.” Children, Youth and Environments 24(3): 16-42. Retrieved [date] from: http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublication?journalCode=chilyoutenvi.

Abstract Do nature-deficit routines undermine affinity with the biosphere? We assessed social-ecological features in Stockholm that afford nature experiences and analyzed the accessibility of these natural areas to preschools. We then selected preschools with contrasting accessibilities. The nature routines resulting from differing outdoor possibilities in preschool life were investigated in relation to children’s affinity with the biosphere. Preschools with routines closer to nature have children who are more empathetic and concerned for non-human life forms, and more cognitively aware of human-nature interdependence. We conclude that, nature-rich routines in cities significantly correlate with higher children’s ability to develop affinity with the biosphere.

Keywords: nature routine, affinity with the biosphere, extinction of experience, preschool children, urban design

2014 Children, Youth and Environments Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 17

Connection with the Biosphere and Urban Routines The spatial design of a city is a leading factor in how urban dwellers relate to the physical landscape. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, anthropocentric forces have progressively separated urban systems from their surrounding natural environments (Steffen, Crutzen and McNeill 2007; Steffen et al. 2011). The commodities that a modern city requires are now not only drawn from the adjacent regional landscape, but increasingly from the furthest reaches of the planet (Folke et al. 1997; Barthel et al. 2005; Grimm et al. 2008; Deutsch 2004). While historically cities were designed to fruitfully co-exist with local and regional ecosystems, for instance to enable urban agriculture or to benefit from local sources of waterpower (Mumford 1961; Barthel and Isendahl 2013), today’s urban dynamics conceal from urban dwellers both presence and importance of the ecological life-support systems. The socio-technical experience of the urban landscape has left the vast majority of urban citizens systematically deprived of in situ nature experiences, especially on a daily basis. Such urban routines can be said to be affected by an “extinction of nature experiences,” which is often negatively associated with people’s engagement in nature conservation (Miller 2005; Samways 2007; Stokes 2006). The lack of personal nature experiences seems to initiate a self-reinforcing cycle of disaffection and carelessness for the environment with direct implications for the emergence of sustainable lifestyles (Pyle 1993). On a larger scale, such estrangement from the biosphere is considered a systematic barrier for a decisive shift of civil society towards sustainable development (Folke et al. 2011; Folke, Holling and Perrings 1996).

On the other hand, the processes that lead someone to engage in environmental stewardship are found in the early-life establishment of positive affective and cognitive assumptions towards nature (Stern 2000; Schultz 2000; Dunlap et al. 2000; Stern, Dietz and Kalof 1993; Kals, Schumacher and Montada 1999). However, the research that investigates the emergence of positive environmental attitudes relies mostly on retrospective interviews (Chawla 1999) and surveys (Ewert, Place and Sibthorp 2005; Wells and Evans 2003). Such methodology highlights how conscious attributes of the human mind shape one’s attitude towards the environment, but implicitly neglects the unconscious mind. Hence, only memories of nature experiences that are available to consciousness are taken into consideration. However, nature experiences that are not available for memory retrieval, but are the background of one’s routine, may have great significance on forming the human appreciation of nature. Indeed, the impact of unconscious contextual factors in shaping one’s mindset is evident in many other aspects of human life, from parents’ role in children’s development to the function that advertising plays in society for adults.

In neural processes, persistent experiences play a leading role in how environmental perceptions come to constitute one’s internal representation of reality. In academia, the significance of consistent stimuli to shape one’s identity is recognized, for instance, in the learning process of psychological conditioning, and increasingly in biological and cognitive neurosciences. Indeed, the persistent exposure to the same neurological stimulus physically nurtures the same neural networks (Maletic-Savatic, Malinow and Svoboda 1999). It follows that, persistent Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 18 access to nature might be closely related to the development of a mindset more neurologically familiar and accustomed with the biosphere. For instance, the impossibility to interact with ecological dynamics over a long period of time might nurture the blind assumption that humankind is a detached self-regulating body separate from the biosphere. The degree to which the human-nature separation is embedded in one’s mindset is likely to influence one’s cognitive decision-making process over issues of environmental concern. A persistent and unconscious deficiency in first-hand nature experiences might therefore be a key barrier for the initiation of future sustainable practices.

In this study, we intend to complement previous research and shed light on how long-lasting nature experiences, i.e. nature routines, embedded in the configurations of urban landscapes relate to the development of an affiliation with the biosphere. To reveal the relevance of contextual factors in this process the methodology is carefully designed to address persistency rather than intensity of nature interactions. First, we utilize spatial accessibility to natural environments as a medium for the assessment of nature routines. We perform a geographical evaluation of how nature experiences are distributed in the landscape of our study area, i.e. the of Stockholm, and evaluate how frequently they are used for outdoor activities in preschools. Second, we evaluate if differing nature experiences over four years of preschool life relate to different affinity with the biosphere in 5-year-old children. In summary, we analyze children’s emotional and cognitive affinity with the biosphere in relation to nature-rich and nature-deficit routines.

Research Question and Hypothesis As humans generally “learn to love what has become familiar” (Orr 2002), or cannot learn to love what has not become familiar, we assume that the nature- deficit routines enforced by modern urban landscapes undermine humans’ capacity to be familiar and eventually affiliate with the biosphere. This article explores whether individuals’ unconscious appreciation of nature, or one’s degree of identification with nature, is influenced by a consistent loss of contact with nature determined by the spatial features of the urban environment. We examine how consistent access to nature experiences in Stockholm, Sweden affects the development of emotional, cognitive, and attitudinal affinity with the biosphere. The research focuses on childhood, when nature experiences are considered to be most formative (Kahn, Jr. and Kellert 2002; Chawla 1998; 1999; Louv 2005), and on the urban landscape, where nature experiences are likely to be the most homogeneous in type and their accessibility likely to be unevenly distributed in the landscape.

The research analyzes the extinction of nature experiences in the surroundings of urban preschools in Stockholm and relates it to the degree of affinity with the biosphere that 5-year-old children have developed during four years. Children during this period spend large amounts of their waking time in preschools (on average from 8am to 3pm) some of which (14 hours/week) occur outside the gates of the preschool. The design of preschools itself has already been acknowledged to be of importance for the children’s indoor learning experience (Gandini 1993), but does the design of urban outdoors influence children’s understanding of the Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 19 biosphere? More specifically, does the extinction of nature experiences in urban areas correlate with reduced affinity with the biosphere in preschool children? We hypothesize that children who have persistent access to nature experiences over a period of four years, because their preschool is located in a “greener” area, develop stronger affinity with the biosphere than those who have limited nature experiences available in the surroundings of their preschool. We expect the results to indicate a relationship between the spatial configuration of urban nature in Stockholm and the degree to which children learn to affiliate with the biosphere.

Theoretical and Methodological Design The methodological approach is constituted of three interrelated steps; 1) classification and mapping of nature experiences using pre-existing geographical data, 2) analysis of preschool accessibility and frequency of use of such nature experiences, and 3) analysis of affinity with the biosphere in preschool children with differing accessibility to nature experiences.

Analysis of Spatial Accessibility to Nature Experiences In order to remain consistent with previous studies in this field, a “nature experience” is defined here as a human interaction with non-human species and natural environments (Finch 2008; Miller 2005; Pyle 1993; Samways 2007). However, we consider the general distinction between “human-made” and “natural” areas arbitrary because, especially in urban and peri-urban landscapes, there often is a long history of human land use that has shaped most natural environments (Barthel, Crumley and Svedin 2013; Berkes, Colding and Folke 2000; Crumley 1994). We acknowledge that the biophysical attributes of the landscape that are considered “natural” are to some extent embedded in the local cultural system that defines the meaning of what is “natural” (Geertz 1973). Biophysical and cultural properties are therefore at the core of this study in both the geographical classification of natural experiences and in the analysis of spatial accessibility. We map where experiences of nature are present in the city of Stockholm by synthesizing both social and ecological properties of the urban landscape. The overall analysis adopts the well-established theoretical and methodological approach of space syntax that pioneered the convergence of spatial analysis and spatial cognition (Dalton, Hölscher and Turner 2012; Peponis, Zimring and Choi 1990; Hillier and Hanson 1984; Hillier 1996). Today, this approach has an extensive body of documented research detailing how cognitive understanding of the environment can establish behavioral patterns (Koch, Marcus and Steen 2009; Greene, Reyes and Castro 2012). Our spatial analysis utilizes two methodological elements of space syntax to assess the distribution of nature experiences in the municipality of Stockholm: the sociotope map, and the attraction accessibility algorithm.

The sociotope map categorizes geographical areas of the Stockholm municipality into sociotopes (Sociotophandboken 2003). Sociotopes are defined and classified by triangulation of expert evaluation, expert observation and public dialogue, and are not mutually exclusive (Ståhle 2006). Hence, sociotopes of “nature” are delimited topographical areas in Stockholm that synthesize how natural properties in the landscape are perceived and used by the local civil society (Ståhle 2006). We Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 20 identify the existence of many sociotopes of “nature” and we categorize them in four different “nature experiences”: natural recreation, natural beauty, wilderness, and rurality (Table 1).

Table 1. Sociotopes categorized in four nature experiences

Nature Recreation Natural beauty Wilderness Rurality experience Sociotopes Playing in water Flower display Forest feeling Domesticated of “nature” Playing in nature Contact with Wild nature animals present Picnicking water bodies Peacefulness Small-scale cultivation Riding Green oases Farmer’s market Land formations Panoramas

The accessibility of the preschools to the categorized nature experiences is analyzed using the attraction accessibility algorithm from the locations of the preschools. This analytical tool takes into account the walking distances measured on the street networks, as well as the required amount of changes in direction—i.e., perceived distances (Ståhle, Marcus and Karlström 2005). The accessibility analysis combines the physical effort, measured as number of meters, and the mental distance, measured as number of changes in direction, inherent in distances (Hillier 2003). This approach has proven more successful in predicting both pedestrian and vehicular movement than regular metric measures of distance (Hillier et al. 1993; Hillier and Iida 2005).

Our analysis thus begins with an assessment of nature activities, such as playing with water, having a picnic in the park, being in a peaceful environment, having the feeling of being in a forest, or being in contact with domesticated animals, that are accessible in preschool surroundings. This information is then combined with how frequently the available nature experiences are included in the outdoor curricula of preschools. By joining the classification of urban green areas in the sociotope map with our accessibility analysis using GIS, we consider our analysis to be an accurate assessment of how much nature experiences are available to preschool for outdoor activities. It is important to notice that, in line with the intention of the study, the geographical assessment of nature experiences performed here does not rely on self-reported questionnaires, and therefore does not rely on the participants’ ability to recall memories and recognize which ones have been the most formative. This study identifies the degree of nature experiences occurring over a long period of time using availability, accessibility and frequency of use of geographical areas that have social-ecological attributes of nature.

Analysis of Affinity with the Biosphere Affinity with the biosphere is analyzed with measures similar to several other empirical studies (Clayton 2003; Mayer and Frantz 2004; Nisbet, Zelenski and Murphy 2008; Schultz 2002; Stern 2000). The emotional components of this Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 21 relationship are included in the assessment to create a holistic depiction of the participant’s affiliation with nature (Kals, Schumacher and Montada 1999). However, the methods we apply have been adapted from the aforementioned empirical studies to better suit the age of the participants. Biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic values associated with the development of environmental attitudes and concern, as in the Value-Belief-Norm model (Stern, Dietz and Kalof 1993; Stern and Dietz 1994), could not be measured because such values are not yet developed for this age group (Kellert 2002; Bronfenbrenner 1986). We adapt structural- developmental methods (Kahn, Jr. 1999) that were originally designed to address children’s conception of the world (Piaget 1960) and that have been successfully employed in a multitude of studies examining children’s environmental morality (Kahn, Jr. et al. 2008; Kahn, Jr. and Friedman 1995; Howe, Kahn, Jr. and Friedman 1996). We intentionally avoid the use of self-reporting questionnaires because the sense of connectedness with nature is regarded as a zero-order belief, i.e. a primitive belief of which we are consciously unaware, and therefore it cannot be verbalized, especially by 5-year-old children (Schultz et al. 2004). Children are indeed incapable of deep self-exploration and have very limited capacity to express the complexity of their emotions and beliefs. Hence, we used previously employed image-based techniques (Bryant 1982; Feshbach 1975; Pell and Jarvis 2001; Borke 1973) to design an assessment that non-verbally evaluates affinity with the biosphere, similar to the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS) (Mayer and Frantz 2004), the Nature Relatedness Scale (NR) (Nisbet, Zelenski and Murphy 2008), and the connection to nature index (Cheng and Monroe 2010; Evans et al. 2007).

All tasks that children are asked to perform in the assessment had been tested in two previous pilot studies to be suitable for the cognitive abilities of children of five years of age and are separated in two complementary sections: emotional and cognitive affinity with the biosphere. The third section, attitudinal affinity with the biosphere, is a qualitative exploration of children’s desire to engage in playful nature experiences. Using short interviews, we intend to clarify children’s spoken attitudes towards nature, and to explore some of the conscious causes that drive a child to actively engage in nature-oriented entertainment.

Emotional Affinity with the Biosphere Children’s emotional affinity with the biosphere is here quantified by the capacity for emotional perspective-taking and empathic concern for nature. The tasks related to emotional perspective-taking (EA1-EA8) assess the child’s empathetic capacity to experience pain for living beings (e.g., marine life, birds, plants, animals) in comparison to empathy for damages to manufactured objects (e.g., vehicles). A similar method is used for adults in the Environmental Motives Scale (Schultz 2000; 2001; Schultz et al. 2004). The tasks related to empathic concern for nature (EA9-EA14) assess the positive or negative emotional response after participants are shown pictures of positive or negative environmental behaviors (e.g., polluting water/littering, watering plants). These emotional attributes indicate a degree of self-other overlap (Cialdini et al. 1997) and are also employed elsewhere to measure unconscious affection for nature (Mayer and Frantz 2004; Nisbet, Zelenski and Murphy 2008; Cheng and Monroe 2010).

Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 22

Cognitive Affinity with the Biosphere Children’s cognitive affinity with the biosphere is measured by their basic awareness of the ecological resources required for human sustenance (CA1-CA9). That is, children’s capacity to link everyday items to the natural resources required for their production, and their ability to recognize the negative impact that pollution has on ecosystems and the biosphere (CA10-CA21).

Attitudinal Affinity with the Biosphere The analysis of children’s attitudinal affinity with the biosphere is based on qualitative methods. Children are interviewed about their appreciation of nature experiences and their conscious willingness to play in natural environments. In order to provide a holistic description of the children’s attitudinal affinity with nature they are also asked to rationalize their previous answers. This approach enables us to explore children’s reasoning and to recognize what constitutes and drives attitudes towards nature at an age when both spatial familiarity and environmental awareness begin to emerge (Piaget 1960).

Collection of Data The data collection process is divided into three phases. In Phase 1, we assess children’s frequency of nature experiences during preschool activities. In Phase 2, we assess children’s emotional, cognitive, and attitudinal affinity with the biosphere. Finally, in Phase 3, we assess the children’s social context. Each phase is described below.

Phase 1: Assessing Children’s Frequency of Nature Experiences in Preschools All 134 municipal preschools in Stockholm that adhere to the Reggio Emilia pedagogical approach were ranked according to the availability of nature experiences of recreation, natural beauty, wilderness, and rurality in their surroundings. We chose preschools that use the Reggio Emilia approach because they are widely available in the Stockholm municipality, and because they emphasize the importance of the physical learning environment. We carried out the ranking of preschools using the following procedure:

1. A GIS analysis is performed using the attraction accessibility function in the Place Syntax Tool (Ståhle, Marcus and Karlström 2005), a plug-in application for MapInfo. Preschool accessibility to nature experiences is calculated by measuring the distances between each preschool’s location and every sociotope included in the categorized nature experiences (see Table 1).

2. The distances resulting from the GIS analysis are coupled with how often preschool teachers and pupils cover such distances for outdoor activities. Distances to each sociotope are then translated into values of “frequency of use” to create a more direct evaluation of children’s nature routines. How frequently a distance range is used for outdoor activities determines its relevance in children’s nature routines. We therefore classify the distance from each preschool to each sociotope into five different ranges previously identified by the preschool teachers as corresponding to the frequency of Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 23

their outdoor routines. We then weight the presence of sociotopes in those ranges accordingly (frequency values from 0 to 5). If a sociotope of nature is present in near environments (e.g., 0-25 meters) it has a stronger impact on children’s routines (frequency value 5) because it is systematically experienced, while sociotopes in a distant range (e.g., 500-1000 meters) have less impact (frequency value 1) because they are experienced only sporadically. The frequency values in relation to the distance ranges are:

0 to 25 meters (Daily exposure) – frequency value 5 25 to 100 meters (11-15 times per month) – frequency value 4 100 to 500 meters (5-10 times per month) – frequency value 3 500 to 1000 meters (2-4 times per month) - frequency value 2 1000 to 2000 meters (3-4 time per year) - frequency value 1 >2000 meters (Not walkable daily) - frequency value 0

3. The resulting frequency values for each sociotope are then summed up in a single value. At this stage, each preschool has a unique value that represents a reliable estimation of how often the nature experiences available in the preschool’s surroundings are experienced during outdoor activities. All 134 preschools are ranked according to this value.

In other words, each preschool is ranked according to the highest frequency of use of the greatest variety of nature experiences in its surroundings (mean = 40.3, SD = 7.7). The top ten preschools with the most frequent use of all nature experiences and the ten preschools with the least frequent use were selected for comparison. Preschools in the second-ranked deciles could not be selected to complement this data because they were pilot-cases used to consolidate the methods for the assessment of children’s affiliation with the biosphere (Giusti 2012). Of the selected 20 preschools, 13 were eliminated because they did not meet the requirements for Phase 2 (having a minimum of three Swedish children of five years of age who have been in the same preschool since their first year). The remaining seven preschools selected—two from the top ranking and five from the bottom ranking—reported an average time of outdoor activities with children of 14 hours/week (SD = 1.7) in line with the Swedish national curriculum (Skolverket 2010).

Phase 2: Assessing Children’s Affinity with the Biosphere Each component of this phase is designed to prevent known demographic and cultural factors from influencing the results (Dunlap et al. 2000). Children’s age, their number of years of education, their nationality, the nationality of both their parents, the pedagogical approach of the preschool, and the overall urban environment (Stockholm) are personal, social, and spatial characteristics that are uniform in this study. Restricting variation in such a wide variety of factors limits the size of the dataset, but makes the research more consistent with its intent: assessing how four years of experiencing urban landscapes with different natural features relates to children’s affinity with the biosphere.

The final participants were 16 children from preschools with low access to nature experiences and 11 from preschools with high access to nature experiences. Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 24

Teachers individually interviewed all children inside their own preschool to create a safe, relaxing environment for the children to respond to the tasks given to them (Chawla 2006b). In so doing, we also minimize eventual unconscious transfer of desired results from researchers to the children.

Materials for Phase 2 The assessment of children’s affinity with the biosphere is designed to address affective and cognitive aspects of connectedness with the biosphere using two complementary sets of image-based tasks, or “games.” The games were designed to be general and not locally specific, as well as straightforward to interpret for the researchers. Children’s motivations and intentions of playing in natural environments, i.e. attitudinal affinity, is then evaluated with a short interview (Table 2). Before performing the interview, the teachers were briefed about the project and its assumptions, and were provided with written instructions on how to perform all the requested tasks.

Table 2. Games testing for Emotional Affinity (EA1-EA14), Cognitive Affinity (CA1-CA21), and Attitudinal Affinity with the Biosphere

assigned task image sample Answer yes-no to “Does [image] feel pain?” the the Tasks EA1 to EA8

with

Choosing a smile after nity

ffi showing an image of A positive/negative Biosphere environmental behavior.

Emotional Tasks EA9 to EA14 Answer “What do you need to have [image first column]?” by

the the selecting image from the second column.

with Tasks CA1 to CA9

nity Answer: “Is [image] ffi [animals] [vehicles] A harmful to [image]?” Biosphere First column images are shown one after the other for each of

Cognitive the four image groups

in the second column: [you] [people] animals, vehicles, you, Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 25

people. Each image group in the second column is composed of three distinct images. Tasks CA10 to CA21

Select image and Recreation Videogames Playground Farm motivate: area

the the “Where do/don’t you like to play?” “Why?” with

“Where do/don’t you

nity feel free to play?”

ffi “Why?” A Toys Green area Outdoor Forest

Biosphere “Where do/don’t you street feel safe to play?” “Why?” Attitudinal

Emotional Affinity (EA) with the Biosphere The games EA1-EA8 use images to assess empathic perspective taking through eight yes/no questions. Children are shown images (e.g., animals, tree, plane) and asked: “Does this image feel pain?” Positive answers to images of vehicles are considered to represent non-affinity with nature. In the games EA9-EA14, six images of positive or negative environmental behaviors (e.g., planting a tree/positive, littering/negative) are shown to the children who are asked to respond by using the image of a smiling or sad face. Smiling faces for images of negative environmental behaviors are considered to represent non-affinity with the biosphere.

Cognitive Affinity (CA) with the Biosphere In the games CA1-CA9, participants are asked to couple nine images of finite products (“What do you need to have [image],” e.g., milk, wooden table, paper) to the corresponding image of the natural resource required (e.g., cow, forest, tree). Coupling the products with man-made resources (e.g., factory, money) are considered as representing non-affinity with nature. In the games CA10-CA21, participants are asked 12 yes/no questions about the harmful effects of environmental pollution on living beings (e.g., “Is [image of water/air/ground pollution] harmful to [image of people/child/animals/vehicles]?”). Positive answers about vehicles are considered to represent non-affinity with the biosphere.

Attitudinal Affinity with the Biosphere Children are asked six questions during a short interview: “Where do/don’t you like to play?”, “Where do/don’t you feel free to play?”, and “Where do/don’t you feel safe to play?” Participants answer by selecting one of eight images of different Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 26 environments (park, indoor videogames, playground, farm, indoor toys, green areas, outdoor street, and forest). The interview focuses on playing in natural environments because it resulted to be the easiest hypothetical activity for children to imagine. In order to enhance comprehension and facilitate the envisioning of such hypothetical behavior the interview is facilitated by picture selection. Children are then asked to rationalize their choices using their own words.

Phase 3: Assessing Children’s Social Context The respondents during Phase 3 are the parents (N = 27) of the 27 children that were interviewed in Phase 2. This phase attempts to assess the socio-economic factors that might have influenced children’s degree of connectedness with nature that could not be controlled a priori.

Materials for Phase 3 Three surveys are used during this phase. Survey one evaluates children’s exposure to natural experiences during family activities. Parents are asked to provide the amount of hours per week their child usually plays, excluding the time spent playing at the preschool, in eight different indoor and outdoor environments (park, video games, playground, farm, indoor toys, green areas, streets, and forest).

Survey two assesses social factors that might have facilitated, or constrained, children’s engagement in nature experiences (Table 3). The children’s parents rate 16 statements using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) inspired by the NEP (Bamberg and Moser 2007).

Table 3. Survey of children’s parents

Exploration tolerance “I tolerate when my child has scratches on knees and arms” “I tolerate when my child has very muddy clothes or shoes” “I tolerate when my child walks outdoor barefoot” “I tolerate when my child collects objects from the ground” “I tolerate when my child puts in his/her mouth objects from the ground” Environmental values “I am involved in protecting the environment I live in” “I am fascinated by the beauty of natural elements” “I feel pleasure spending time in natural environments” Perceived safety “Playing in parks is safe for my child” “Playing in agricultural environments with animals is safe for my child” “Playing in green areas with animals, water, flowers, etc. is safe for my child” “Playing in the forest is safe for my child” Perceived importance “Playing in parks is important for my child” “Playing in agricultural environments with animals is important for my child” “Playing in green areas with animals, water, flowers, etc. is important for my child” “Playing in the forest is important for my child”

Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 27

The third survey assesses parents’ socio-economic characteristics. Parents are asked standard demographic information (e.g., age, number of children) and their motivation for selecting the preschool in which their child is enrolled. Additionally, parents’ income range is assessed through district statistical data provided online by the city of Stockholm (Stockhom Stad).

Results

Phase 1: Children’s Frequency of Nature Experiences in Preschools Figure 1 shows the geographical location of all the selected 134 preschools and their different frequency of use of nature experiences, together with the locations of the top and the bottom ten preschools selected for comparison. The standard deviation values obtained from the statistical analysis confirm that nature experiences of “recreation” (mean = 11.3, SD = 2.2) and “natural beauty” (mean = 11.6, SD = 3.3) are more evenly distributed than experiences of “wilderness” (mean = 11.3, SD = 4.3), while experiences of “rurality” are considerably less available across the whole municipality (mean = 6.1, SD = 2.9). In fact, the spatial configuration of Stockholm provides very few experiences of “rurality” (Figure 1d) and mostly isolates experiences of “wilderness” in peripheral locations of the municipality (Figure 1c). The two preschools with highest frequency of nature experiences, compared to the five lowest ones, have considerably more access to all four nature experiences (mean = 38.7, SD = 18): recreation (mean = 11, SD = 6.4), natural beauty (mean = 11.1, SD = 6.4), wilderness (mean = 11.4, SD = 5.5) and rurality (mean = 6.2, SD = 3.8).

Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 28

Figure 1. Distribution of nature experiences of a) recreation, b) natural beauty, c) wilderness, and d) rurality from preschools in Stockholm. a) b)

c) d)

Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 29

Phase 2: Children’s Affinity with the Biosphere Phase 2 analyzes emotional and cognitive affinity with nature in 11 Children with Nature-Rich routines (CNR) and in 16 Children with Nature-Deficit routines (CND). Because of the small dataset, the computation of reliability using Cronbach’s Alpha is presented in combination with Spearman-Brown coefficients (Yurdugul 2008). The reliability of the 35 tasks assessing children’s affinity with the biosphere is α = .701 and odd-even splits report a split-half reliability of r = .758. These results ensure data reliability and strong internal consistency of both emotional and cognitive tasks as well as the overall quantitative assessment of the children’s affinity with the biosphere. The affinity rates for CNR and CND are compared with independent two-sample t-tests (Table 4).

Table 4. Mean results, Standard Deviation (SD), t, p, df, and effect size (d) of independent two-sample t-test for Emotional and Cognitive Affinity with the Biosphere in Children with Nature-Rich routines (CNR) and Children with Nature-Deficit routines (CND)

affinity CNR affinity CND (N = 11) (N = 16) Mean SD Mean SD t p df d Emotional Affinity with the .792 .121 .665 .154 2.289 .031 25 .916 Biosphere Cognitive Affinity with the .771 .134 .660 .133 2.114 .045 25 .845 Biosphere

Children with nature-rich routines score significantly and notably higher in Emotional Affinity (EA) with nature (mean= .792, two-sample t(25) = 2.289, p = .031, d = .916) than children with nature-deficit routines (mean = .665). CNR show higher capacities to emotionally affiliate with the biosphere in almost all questions, regardless of the difficulty characterizing the single tasks. Specifically, CNR perform better in the tasks EA1 (37 percent higher empathy towards trees; mean-CNR = .55, mean-CND = .38), EA7 (28 percent higher empathy towards fishes; mean-CNR = .91, mean-CND = .69), EA9 (46 percent higher sadness related to water pollution; mean-CNR = 1, mean-CND = .63) and EA10 (37 percent higher sadness related to deforestation; mean-CNR = .73, mean-CND = .50). CNR have therefore developed stronger capacity for perspective-taking towards non-human life forms and higher empathic concern towards environmental degradation. Overall, children with nature-rich routines consistently show on average 17 percent stronger emotional affinity with the biosphere than children with nature-deficit routines (Figure 2).

Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 30

Figure 2. Average results of games testing for Emotional and Cognitive Affinity with the Biosphere

Children with nature-rich routines score (mean = .771) significantly and notably higher in Cognitive Affinity (CA) with nature (two-sample t(25) = 2.114, p = .045, d = .845) than the children with nature-deficit routines (mean = .660). CNR also show higher cognitive capacity to link finite products with the ecological resources required for their manufacture and better perception of the harmful effects of environmental degradation (Figure 2). Specifically, children with nature-rich routines perform better in the tasks CA5 (37 percent higher understanding of the link between wool and sheep, mean-CNR = .73, mean-CND = .5), CA8 (37 percent higher understanding of the link between blueberries and forest, mean-CNR = .73, mean-CND = .5), and CA19 (50 percent higher understanding the harmful effects of water pollution for animals, mean-CNR = .73, mean-CND = .44). Once again, those children with nature-rich routines consistently show on average 15 percent higher cognitive capacities to affiliate with the biosphere in almost all questions, regardless of the levels of difficulty characterizing the single tasks.

The qualitative analysis of children’s attitudinal affinity with the biosphere shows that children with high and low nature experiences share very similar attitudes towards playing in natural environments. Indeed, children of both groups consider indoor environments the safest to play in (n = 13) and wild environments the least safe (n = 12). The fear of getting lost and losing their parents (n = 4) and the fear of dangerous animals such as wolves, bears, and moose (n = 6) motivate a large Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 31 number of such attitudes. Supplementary results are provided by the short interviews in which children are asked to rationalize their affiliation with nature. Children might want to play indoors just because they can be part of choosing the dinner, or might want to play outdoors because they do not want to be disturbed by their little sibling. The reasoning for their choices is mostly based on contextual memories. Similarly, their emotional reactions to the biosphere relate to their contextual understanding of reality. “Deer and dinosaurs do not feel pain because they can hit back” (Karolina) or “because you are afraid of them” (Fabian), and “airplanes and cars are alive because they drink gas” (Erwin) are some examples of how the conscious motivations that justify their positive or negative emotional reactions are constructed upon their own vision of the world.

Phase 3: Assessing Children’s Social Context The influence of the social context on children’s affinity with nature is estimated, but the size of the dataset (N = 27) limits the conclusions that can be drawn.

Parents are surveyed on children’s exposure to natural environments during family activities. On average parents estimate that children play 49.7 percent indoors, 18.2 percent in playgrounds and streets, and 32.1 percent in natural environments (mean = 25.4, SD = 12.1). However, parents’ answers are very inconsistent because they reported an unrealistically wide range of playing hours per week (min = 8, max = 72). Such data and results are therefore unsuitable for robust conclusions.

The social factors that might facilitate children’s engagement with nature are assessed using a survey of 16 Likert-based items given to children’s parents. The results have been normalized in a single score (mean = .83) with a Cronbach’s Alpha α = .841, and the computation of odd-even splits produces split-half reliability of r = .712. However, such results show no correlation with children’s emotional (r = .03, p > .05) or cognitive affinity with the biosphere (r = -.19, p > .05). The homogeneity of the social sample taken into consideration (i.e., all parents are Swedish persons living in Stockholm in similar age groups) seems indeed to have produced highly analogous answers (SD = .08). Parents’ main motivation for choosing the preschool for their child is “because it’s close to home” (97 percent) which makes the analysis of available nature experiences in the surroundings of preschools somewhat also indicative of home circumstances. Parents’ economic status shows no correlation with the degree of emotional (r = - .16, p > .05) and cognitive affinity children have (r = -.20, p >.05), thus a hypothetical association between low affinity with the biosphere and low income ranges is not supported by this study.

Discussion and Implications The main results of this study indicate that the spatial configuration of nature experiences in Stockholm is associated with children’s development of an affinity with the biosphere. More specifically, we show that of the 27 participants, those who have had nature-deficit routines for four years in preschool have developed considerably weaker emotional and cognitive affinity with the biosphere. The strict selection of participants (same age, years of education, nationality, parents’ Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 32 nationality, preschools’ pedagogical approach), the consistency in the analysis of social factors that facilitate children in engaging with nature experiences (mean = .83, SD= .08), and the proximity of children’s homes to preschools (in 97 percent of the respondents) control for possible confounding variables. The significant variance found in the results for both children’s emotional (17 percent) and cognitive affinity (15 percent) is in close relation to the nature routines that children have had during preschool outdoor activities. The results show that deficient contact with urban nature over time is negatively associated with children’s development of an attachment to the biosphere. Additionally, the results on attitudinal affiliation with nature show that children’s attitudes towards playing in nature are limited by highly contextual factors. For instance, the choice to play outdoors may have to do with the presence of friends rather than an outspoken preference for any particular environment. Thus, although firsthand experiences of nature have a significant role in enabling positive attitudes towards the environment, other complex contextual circumstances might hinder the emergence of such attitudes.

Supplementary results are provided by the short interviews in which children are asked to rationalize their affiliation with the biosphere. The emotional attraction or repulsion for the biosphere that children show with their answers seem to emerge from their own understanding of reality. Children do not show a positive attitude for nature for what nature is in itself, but for what nature is for them. As suggested by the biological theory of cognition, the internal representation of reality is built upon neural interactions between an individual and the external environment (Maturana and Varela 1987). In this neural dynamic, persistency plays a leading role. Indeed, persistent exposure to the same neurological experience materially nurtures the same neural networks (Maletic-Savatic, Malinow and Svoboda 1999). Accordingly, for one group of children in this study, the persistent high frequency of nature experiences have nurtured an affinity with the biosphere that might be supported by a somatic “neural familiarity” with experiences of biological rather than of artificial character. Such “neural familiarity” is an unconscious attribute that is physically wired in one’s neural configuration, and so it is an embedded characteristic of one’s own biological identity (Zull 2002; Maturana and Varela 1987). As already hypothesized (Naess 1973; Bragg 1996; Schultz 2002), nature- deficit routines not only impact one’s worldview and set of assumptions, but might be literally part of one’s biological identity. A disappearance of nature experiences from everyday life may leave human beings with a void of memories that would impede nature and natural dynamics from entering the neural representation of self upon which humans build emotions and reasoning.

From the spatial analysis it should be noted that the experiences of wilderness are the most dissimilar in access across the two groups of children, and the games that measure children’s capacity to emotionally affiliate with elements in wild environments are the ones with the highest variation. Although the research design does not allow us to conclusively discuss the influence of each nature experience (i.e., recreation, natural beauty, wilderness, rurality) separately, this result further supports our hypothesis that persistent deficiency of nature experiences relates to reduced affiliation with natural features. Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 33

Due to the limited number of respondents, we acknowledge that additional studies of this kind are needed to ensure the statistical power of the results and to consider them for nomothetic conclusions. However, our findings add to the literature cited herein and suggest that the patterns we have observed offer important insights that are not only characteristic of Stockholm and Swedish children, but are likely to have more general applicability. This paper hence calls for much needed interdisciplinary research linking urban design, environmental psychology, neuroscience and anthropology, in order to further evaluate how nature routines that are designed in cities nurture or constrain one’s identification with nature. The implications of such research could dramatically impact the state-of-the-art of urban design, and offer a generous opportunity to provide urban dwellers with the kind of emotional attachment to nature that acts as stepping stone for the emergence of environmental stewardship.

Conclusion The spatial configurations of modern cities consistently marginalize natural environments in both presence and diversity (Mumford 1961; Miller 2005). In this study, the consequences of such planned and designed exclusion of nature experiences are measured on children’s affiliation with the biosphere. Our results indicate that persistent interaction with natural environments correlates with a higher capacity to emotionally and cognitively affiliate with the biosphere. Exposure to nature experiences during the first four years of life does not seem to weaken children’s fear of predators or of getting lost in the forest—which are known biophobic traits (Ulrich 1993)—but significantly correlates with children’s ability to distinguish living from lifeless entities, to be empathetic for non-human life forms (EA1-EA8), to be concerned for environmental degradation (EA9-EA14), to be aware of the harmful effects of environmental pollution (CA1-CA9), and finally to recognize the role of ecological resources for the production of everyday objects (CA10-CA21).

This study supports the hypothesis that long-lasting exposure to natural environments, even in an urban context, is closely related to the development of a conscious and unconscious affinity with the biosphere and its dynamics. The nature routines embedded in urban forms seem to act as contextual factors that nurture the development of mindsets more or less affiliated with nature. Such affinity has previously been suggested to have significant effects on the foundation of a lifelong commitment to environmental concern (Schultz 2001; 2000) and environmental stewardship (Chawla 2006a; 1998). As the urban population of the world is projected to surpass six billion in 2050 (United Nations 2007), urban spaces that nurture nature routines, especially during childhood, are likely to support the re- connection with the biosphere which many scholars in the sustainability sciences are calling for (Folke et al. 2011; Bragg 1996; Samways 2007; Miller 2005). Is it possible to design cities that mitigate the on-going trend of “extinction of nature experiences” (Miller 2005), “environmental generational amnesia” (Kahn, Jr. 2002), or “nature-deficit disorder” (Louv 2005)? Humankind is aspiring to a sustainable stewardship of the biosphere. Such stewardship might be dependent not only on the human capacity to rationally comprehend the limits of natural resources, but Nature Routines and Affinity with the Biosphere: A Case Study of Preschool… 34 also on the human capacity to emotionally bond with local ecosystems and existing non-human life. Considering that cities are the most common human habitat, the intentional design of their very forms have great potential to remind, cherish or neglect the interdependence of human and biotic well-being.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Terry Hartig for the insightful discussion on an earlier version of the paper, and three anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

Matteo Giusti’s research aims at defining principles of urban design that nurture identification with nature. The “extinction of nature experience” is commonplace in the urban lifestyle and its consequences are widely assumed to trigger a self- reinforcing cycle of disaffection that hinders people’s engagement in environmental stewardship. Matteo’s research revolves on how to design spatial configurations of urban nature to support the psychological foundation of environmental stewardship—identification with nature. Matteo’s research embraces aspects of resilience theory, spatial cognition, biophilic design, neuro-biological theories of cognition, and more generally environmental psychology and urban design.

Stephan Barthel's research revolves around the management of urban ecosystem services and resilience. Stephan’s research shows that urban ecosystem services are a product of human-driven co-evolution, consequently sustaining ecosystems in urban landscapes is not about conservation without people, but shaped by and dependent on management practice by people. Practice that links to generation of ecosystem services are facilitated by social-ecological memory of local communities-of-practice that holds long-term management rights. Consequently, local communities of practice that contribute to the production of ecosystem services should explicitly be taken into account in urban green of urban landscapes.

Lars Marcus is an architect and professor in Urban Design at KTH School of Architecture. He is director of the research group Spatial Analysis and Design (SAD) in the field of Spatial Morphology, the study of how spatial form generated by architecture and urban design structures people’s use of space in their everyday life and, in extension, conditions critical social, economic and ecological processes. He is co-founder of the international MSc-program in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design (SUPD) and also founder of the consultancy firm Spacescape, which performs spatial analysis and policy development for urban projects.

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How nature conservation connects, or not, children to nature

Journal of submission: Environment and Behavior

Authors: Giusti Matteo, Barthel Stephan Abstract

Is participating in a school project of conservation of salamanders a significant life experience that connects children to nature? This paper combines insights from two empirical approaches to respond to this question. The first one (study 1) is a qualitative evaluation (N=25) centered on interviewing children after they participated in the project. The second approach (study 2) is a between-subjects experiment (N=158) with control groups that employs several quantitative methods to evaluate potential changes in implicit, explicit, and intentional association with nature. Study 1 shows positive results; by learning how to take care, children have learnt to care about salamander. As the thrill to touch the first salamander turns into the enjoyment of saving them, children manifest a positive attitudinal change towards salamanders, animals, and nature conservation. Reversely, study 2 does not measure any attitudinal change in psychological Connection To Nature (CTN). Participating in the project can then be seen as significant towards a life trajectory more associated with nature, but not towards immediate and transformative personal changes in association with nature. Combined together these results hints to a gap between theory and practice that impedes proper evaluation of changes in CTN due to experiences of nature. In order to advance theoretical understanding and the practical implementation of pedagogical activities of reconnection we suggest revisiting existing evaluation techniques with both interdisciplinary and practical knowledge.

Keywords significant life experiences, connection to nature, children, nature conservation, evaluation, association to nature,

2 Introduction

There is an increasing attention in society on how new generations of children interact with natural environments. One of the drivers for such growing body of literature has been the concern, originally postulated by Robert Pyle (1993) as the “extinction of experience”, that nature conservation, and more generally caring for nature, is inevitably linked to direct nature experiences that are progressively unavailable to new generations. “What is the extinction of a condor to a child that has never seen a wren?” (Pyle 1993) has been a wonder that motivated many researchers to explore the psychological dynamics and ‘significant life experiences’ that underpin nature conservation actions (Louise Chawla 1998; Hsu 2009a) or more generally behaviors that aim at ameliorating the environment (for reviews see Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; Zylstra et al. 2014; Gifford 2014; Restall and Conrad 2015). Despite a multitude of different research approaches, a common research interest is emerging from work in environmental and conservation psychology (Bott, Cantrill, and Myers 2003), ecological conservation (Saunders 2003; Soga and Gaston 2016), and (Folke et al. 2011). These efforts indeed share the common normative goal of reconnecting people with nature (Pyle 2003) and investigate different angles of “how people identify themselves with the natural environment and the relationship they form with nature” (Restall and Conrad 2015).

Parallel to this line of research, there has been an overwhelming proliferation of evidence about psychological and physiological health benefits that humans of all ages derive from interacting with nature (for reviews see Bratman, Hamilton, and Daily 2012; Bratman et al. 2015; Keniger et al. 2013; Russell et al. 2013; Davis 2004; Hartig et al. 2014; L. Chawla 2015). In symbiosis with the popularization of the concept of ‘nature- deficit disorder’ (Louv 2005) such evidence has galvanized a multitude of international hands-on programs that share a goal very similar to the one described above: reconnect children with nature (e.g. Children & Nature Network, Nature Start Alliance, The Wild Network, etc.). This global movement employs a plethora of direct nature experiences to alleviate the ongoing ‘extinction of experience’, but are those hands-on experiences the ‘significant life experiences’ that are argued to play a major role in enabling future nature conservationists (Louise Chawla 1999; Cheng and Monroe 2012; Wells and Lekies 2006; Hsu 2009b)? In other words, do these practical activities reach the goal of connecting children with nature as many in academia advocate?

3 In this paper we evaluate children’s participation in a project of nature conservation. The authentic setting of the project allows us to evaluate the effects of childhood participation in what could arguably be seen as the most significant experience to nurture nature conservationists, nature conservation itself. We then hypothesize that re- occurring direct and indirect participation in a nature conservation project significantly changes children’s relationship with nature. We test this hypothesis using both qualitative and quantitative methods evaluating the complex outcomes of experiences of nature conservation as they unfold.

The Salamander Project (SP)

The Salamander Project (SP) is a program of nature conservation run almost entirely thanks to 4th grade students (10 years old) attending a municipal school in the outskirts of Stockholm. These students are responsible for saving and documenting two species of salamanders, the common newt (Lissotriton vulgaris), and the great crested newt (Triturus cristatus). During every school day from April to May a group of 7 to 8 children guided by a teacher walk to the local park. In the park there is a paddling pool in between the location where salamanders hibernate during winter and the pond in which they reproduce during spring. The paddling pool during this period of the year is dry and when salamanders fall into it on their way to the pond they remain trapped, quickly dry, and consequently die. So, everyday, these children look for trapped salamanders and, when they found one, they carefully pick it by hand, document the species and its gender, and then release it into the pond. Over the 2-month period in which the SP runs, each 4th grader would have collected salamanders from 2 to 5 times depending on presence or other school activities.

The daily reports produced by the children in the SP document that over eight years children have rescued almost 4500 newts making children’s actions an example of a nature conservation project capable not only of preserving local biodiversity, but also of providing sufficient number of newts to repopulate nearby ponds (Kiibus, 2011; Lundberg and Kiibus, 2014). Moreover, the project turned into an element of pride for the whole neighborhood, and into a ‘Salamander evening’ in which nature conservationists publicly discuss the presence of salamanders with children, parents and anyone else interested. Despite being accomplished by students the SP is not intended to be a pedagogical activity. However, the pedagogical structure of the SP

4 has been recently recognized (Belton 2015) and it is under scrutiny to directly inform environmental education research (Belton, Giusti, and Barthel working paper).

Evaluating the significance of the SP

Past educational interventions to foster environmental behaviors have been mostly instructional rather than participatory (Zelezny 1999; Ernst and Theimer 2011). The dominant objective of environmental education driving such interventions has been to promote scientific and technical knowledge (Nazir and Pedretti 2016; Wals, A; Dillon 2013). However, this approach de facto hampers any health benefits associated with direct nature interaction, and it is in friction with the strong emotional component recognized to generally drive pro-environmental behaviors (Kals, Schumacher, and Montada 1999; Louise Chawla 2006a; Müller and Kals 2008; Mayer and Frantz 2004; Nisbet, Zelenski, and Murphy 2008; Cheng and Monroe 2012). Meanwhile, the movement of practitioners emerged to counteract ‘nature-deficit disorder’ and the ‘extinction of nature experience’ is motivated by the health benefits of first-hand experiences, and so centered on direct interaction with nature, free playing, and unstructured activities (see for example The Wild Network mission). Thus, the learning outcomes of such programs are less instrumental and more connected to personal development, which makes standard methods of knowledge assessment less relevant to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs.

A recent study, which evaluated changes in implicit association with nature due to participation in a program that aims at connecting children to nature, has highlighted the necessity to implement a multi-method approach on a large dataset in combination with some control over socio-demographic factors (Bruni et al. 2015). The SP offers this opportunity. Also, despite not being an educational program, the SP shares both the experiential structure of many ‘reconnecting’ programs as well as many conditions that characterize the most effective programs in environmental education: occurring over extended period of time, learning about environmental issues and practicing action skills, experiencing and taking ownership of environmental issues, and participating with role models (Louise Chawla and Cushing 2007). Additionally, participant’s age (10 years old) ensures that the direct experiences of salamanders have strong potential to be formative for CTN (Bruni and Schultz 2010; Lieflander and Bogner 2014). We then design the evaluation of the SP in two separated studies.

5 In Study 1 we interview children participating in the SP to grasp the nuances of how they perceive their relationship with nature has changed and what are the associated salient memories. Qualitative methods are imperative evaluative methods to examine the breadth of a phenomenon and its emerging patterns, especially to assess emotional and interpretive side of significant life experiences (Louise Chawla 2006a). As eloquently Chawla stated: “just as the ultimate goal of research into significant life experiences is to understand how people gain the combination of compassion and knowledge that guides effective environmental protection, research in this field needs to combine emotional and rational skills” (Louise Chawla 2006b).

In Study 2 we assess explicit, implicit, and intentional association with nature using an array of validated quantitative methods. Thus, we evaluate the significance of these experiences drawing from the psychological structure recognized to motivate pro- environmental behavior generally referred to as Connection To Nature (CTN) (Cheng and Monroe 2012; Restall and Conrad 2015). The complex structure of this contested area of research (Beery and Wolf-Watz 2014; Van der Werff, Steg, and Keizer 2013; A Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2011; Ignatow 2006) provides indeed psychometric methods that, in line with the emancipatory view of environmental education (Wals, A; Dillon 2013), are appropriate to numerically evaluate how significant it might be for a child to participate in the SP. We diversified between explicit, implicit and intentional measures of association with nature because as they “involve different psychological processes in behavior determination” (Geng et al. 2015) they might also be differently affected by experiences of nature conservation. In simpler words, we try to understand if the SP is a ‘significant life experience’.

This methodological choice allows the research design to overcome some of the most common critiques to the retrospective line of research that distinguished ‘significant life experiences’ (Gough 1999). We indeed perform research on those who are actively involved in nature conservation and have nearly identical socio-cultural background (e.g. age, level of education, and culture). With this study we intend to initiate a process of quantifiable evaluation of the effects of significant nature experiences as they occur. Evaluating real-life activities in relation to CTN enables the identification of which activities are more or less effective in connecting youth or other populations with nature, and how their strength relates to the physical or cultural context, age, etc. Identifying what is of ‘significance’ in such life experiences would allow for well-informed improvements in the curriculum of programs, and for strategic choices in the selection

6 and schedule of program components. We argue here that this is a crucial step to identify pedagogical activities that can teach children how to connect, reconnect, or remain connected with nature.

Study 1

Methods

Participants

Participants are 4th graders participating in the SP (N=25) equally distributed across the three classes of the school responsible for the SP. There is equal gender representation (12 males, 13 females) and a variety in the number of times children had directly participated in collecting salamander (2,3,4 and 5 times). All participants’ parents provided informed consent.

Material

Study 1 uses semi-structured interviews to explore if and how children who participated in the SP recognize a difference in the way they approach salamanders, nature, or nature conservation after the SP (Belton 2015). The interview also asks about salient memories associated with these changes so to identify which moments can be linked to personal development or transformation. All semi-structured interviews followed an interview guide (see Appendix A), but the interviewer allowed the conversation to follow its natural course to better grasp children’s spontaneous reflections.

Procedure

The interviews were held in Swedish, at the school during school time, and were kept short (about 10 minutes) to create the most comfortable setting for the children.

Results

Association with salamander and nature

7 Interviews were transcribed and coded for emerging themes using Atlas.ti. Basic analysis shows that all 25 children interviewed, even those who only participated twice, expressed that being part of the SP has changed how they see themselves in relation to salamanders. In the eyes of these children salamanders were now associated with feelings of care, empathy, respect, and even aesthetic pleasure. The following quote is representative of how children1 articulated this attitudinal change.

“First I felt, well... how can I explain? ‘Yeah it’s exciting but they are...like...just salamanders’. But now I feel more like, they are alive, they exist. Before I didn’t think ‘I wonder where they are? (...) I care more about them.” (Elena)

When asked if the SP changed them at the personal level, four children spontaneously recognized that their conceptualization of all animals changed. These children showed that the empathy developed towards salamanders made them wonder about the life of all other animals. Three more children also independently recognized that by participating in the SP their attitude towards nature at large has changed. The following quotes are examples of this finding.

“... well I have started to think more about animals and nature. Actually a lot more than what I did before.” (Megan)

“Well, it’s like I’m less scared and I feel... more confident in nature.” (Stephan)

Importantly for the recognition of significant life experiences, all children were willing to continue participating in the SP, and, if given the possibility, most of them were also interested in partaking in other projects of nature conservation. As the following quote exemplifies, participating in the SP provided them with first-hand experiences that nurtured self-efficacy, and also personal insights about the moral rationale that underpins nature conservation.

“I have learnt to take care of animals. I’m maybe thinking about doing something like that maybe...to fix things so that everything is good with nature. (...) Yes...I have become more nature-friendly.” (Sophie)

1 The names used in the quotations are fictional and do not correspond to the real names of the participants, nor to their real gender.

8 Salient memories

The results of the interviews show that children perceived themselves differently in relation to salamanders after participating in the SP, and in some cases this attitudinal change spilled over towards other animals or nature at large. The salient memories associated with this change were almost uniquely connected to the personal excitement of finding the 1st salamander or the rarest ones. The act of discovering salamanders in children was associated with surprise, thrill, excitement, and willingness to share with the classmates.

Importantly, children’s memories repeatedly reflected a specific formative process. The emotional reaction linked to finding salamanders was often associated with overcoming the ‘yuck’ barrier. Once a child finds a salamander is his or her responsibility to collect it by hand and determine species and gender. This direct nature experience forced children to overcome the emotional threshold that kept them from touching, or even considering touching, these animals before. Once the ‘yuck’ barrier was overcome, these children associated salamanders with emotions and experiences of care and empathy as it was for any other pet animals.

Discussion

Children conclusively stated that participating in the SP changed their cognitive and emotional attitude towards salamanders. After participating in the SP children knew more and felt closer to salamanders, but more importantly, they were more interested in knowing more, and more interested in maintaining this close relationship in the future. It is important to notice that because of the structure of the SP emotional and attitudinal changes derives from direct actions. By learning how to take care, they have learnt to care. The SP encouraged them to overcome the barrier of initial repulsion and fear associated with direct and independent interaction with an unknown animal. When children find the 1st salamander they pondered, reflected, and negotiated their emotional reaction with the sense of responsibility derived from being ‘on-duty’ as nature stewards. Once the ‘yuck’ threshold had been overcome, children had potentially changed the instinctive emotional reaction they had towards salamanders and consequently began to include appreciation and care in the scheme of behaviors associated with these animals. Salamanders entered here the category of familiar animals that are worth caring for like any other pet animal. As children stated to feel

9 more comfortable and secure in nature afterwards, overcoming the ‘yuck’ barrier might have been a point in time with significant consequences for how they implicitly and explicitly associated themselves to nature.

Moreover, participating in the SP has made children understand better the activities and emotions that are involved in projects of nature conservation. Asking these children to partake in other conservation projects is to them not a question about committing to unknown situations distant from everyday reality, but about re-experiencing thrill and enjoyment connected to vivid pleasant memories (Barthel, Folke, and Colding 2010). Obviously, this last result has to be read with caution because it relies on children’s self- reported intention to act in the future, but without stretching its significance we can say that, given the possibility, these children seem more likely than before to engage in future nature conservation. After participating in the SP, children’s life-trajectory seems more receptive towards future engagements with salamanders, nature, and nature conservation. In this sense, our findings suggest that participating in the SP, and specifically taking care of the first salamander, can be considered a ‘significant life experience’ of transformative power. Designing such experiences to instill attitudinal changes towards nature is then an achievable goal that future environmental education could promote in parallel with ecological literacy.

Study 2

Study 2 is a between-subject design with two control groups in which the main independent variable of interest is participation in the SP. The goal of study 2 is to quantitatively evaluate changes in explicit, implicit and intentional association with nature in children due to participation to the SP. Including measurements of both implicit and intentional association with nature allows CTN to be evaluated in its full spectrum and not only as a conscious trait of children’s personality (Dunlap et al. 2000; Schultz et al. 2004). Moreover, especially because participants are children, an implicit association test helps to reduce biased results as children might be incapable to fully express their explicit association with nature (Adrian Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2011). Study 1 has shown that children’s relationship with salamanders, and to some extent with nature and nature conservation, has changed. The hypothesis of study 2 is that changes appreciated in Study 1 have an equivalent numeric counterpart

10 measurable as explicit, implicit and intentional association with nature with methods available in environmental psychology.

Method

Participants

Participants are 158 4th graders (85 males, 73 females) attending three schools in Stockholm within 3 kilometers apart from each other. Participants attending one school (N=67 divided in 3 classes) voluntarily partake in the SP whereas the students attending the other two schools do not participate (N=91 divided in 4 classes). The two schools not partaking in the SP act as control groups and have been chosen within close range from the first one to maintain known social-spatial influences constant: e.g. from an with equal spatial access to natural environments (Giusti, Barthel, and Marcus 2014), and with no significant social-economic differences (Louise Chawla and Cushing 2007). All participants’ parents provided informed consent.

Materials

Implicit association with nature has been assessed using two methods: an Implicit Association Test (IAT) in the form of a videogame called FlexiTwins (Bruni, Fraser, and Schultz 2008; Bruni and Schultz 2010) and the Inclusion of Nature in Self scale (INS) (Schultz 2002). Previous research suggests that IATs perform well with children as young as six (Baron & Banaji, 2006) and FlexiTwins has been indeed used in several studies with young people (Bruni et al. 2015; Bruni and Schultz 2010; Schultz 2006). The score resulting from playing FlexiTwins is a number that represent the implicit association strength between the concept of ‘self’ and the concept of ‘nature’. This final score is calculated by comparing how fast (in milliseconds) a child can associate the concept of ‘self’ with words related to the ‘built environment’ versus with words related to ‘nature’. The words used in the FlexiTwins game have been translated to Swedish by the researchers, and then adapted to be child-friendly, chosen to have similar length, and have neutral valence to not skew results as previous research suggests (Geng et al. 2015; Schultz 2006). The words used for stimuli in the nature category are: flower, forest, mountain, and dog, and the words used for stimuli in the built category are: pharmacy, plane, chair, and truck. INS has been implemented in its graphical form of

11 seven couples of increasingly overlapping circles in which one represents nature (“nature”) and the other representing self (“you”) (see Appendix A). The other method of implicit association with nature, the INS, has been successfully used with children (Bragg et al. 2013; Kossack and Bogner 2012; Liefländer 2015; Sellmann and Bogner 2013) and it reports consistent results over time (Adrian Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2011).

Explicit association with nature has been measured using a revised version of the Connection to Nature Index (CNI) (Cheng and Monroe 2012), and 4 additional statements revised from its subscale ‘empathy towards animals’ have been used to measure exclusively ‘empathy towards salamanders’ (herein termed for simplicity Salamander Empathy) (see Appendix A). Bragg at al. (2013) deems the CNI to be the most effective tool in measuring a child’s explicit connection to nature from ages 8-12 and the tool has been widely utilized in a variety of different researches with children (Ernst and Theimer 2011; Theimer and Ernst 2012; Collado, Staats, and Corraliza 2013; Fägerstam 2012).

Intentional association with nature has been measured with a Willingness To Pay (WTP) test in the form of hypothetical open-ended donation to nature conservation projects (see Brown et al. 1996). The WTP question writes: “You get 100 Kronor today! How much of this 100 kronor would you pay for preserving nature?”

Procedure

Both control and treatment groups have been assessed twice: before (pre-intervention in April 2015) and after (post-intervention in May 2015) participating, or not, in the SP. Both assessment of pre-intervention and post-intervention have been performed at the school that children attend during school hours. Testing for INS, CNI, Salamander Empathy, and WTP were completed in class on paper before moving to the computer laboratory, or the use of laptops, to play FlexiTwins.

Results

Before performing any statistical analysis all FlexiTwins scores have been analyzed to ensure accuracy. Following a standard procedure 42 participants were excluded from the analysis of FlexiTwins results because their accuracy rates were lower than 60%, or

12 because of extreme score inconsistency within the same test (see Bruni and Schultz 2010; Bruni et al. 2015 for details). Also, we performed an exploratory t-test on FlexiTwins ‘points’ (i.e. a value that simply reflect how quickly and correctly the participants completed the game) and it showed that children in post-intervention performed significantly better than in pre-intervention ( t(225) = 2.25 p = .026, d= 0.297). That means that when children played FlexiTwins the second time (post- intervention) they were significantly faster and more accurate, making pre and post- treatment comparisons potentially imprecise.

Shapiro Wilk tests showed that the data obtained INS, CNI, WTP, and Salamander Empathy is not normally distributed, so we used non-parametric methods of analysis. In order to examine baseline differences, we conducted multiple Kruskal-Wallis tests on pre-intervention results. We examined if pre-intervention results for FlexiTwins, INS, CNI and its subscales, and WTP were significantly different because the participant attends a specific school (n=3) or a specific class (n=7) and we found no significant differences (p > .1). We consequently performed Wilcoxon rank-sum tests to examine if the same pre-intervention results were significantly different because the participant belongs to the control or to the treatment group. Similarly, no statistical difference was found for FlexiTwins, INS, CNI and its subscales, and WTP (p > .1). We then conducted Kruskal- Wallis tests on the pre-intervention scores for Salamander Empathy and we found no significant differences (p < .1) because a participant attends a specific school (n=3) or a specific class (n=7). However, a Wilcoxon rank-sum tests on pre-intervention scores for Salamander Empathy showed significantly different scores between individuals in the control (M = .692, SD = .205) and in the treatment group (M = .797, SD = .181) (W = 1651, p < .002). That means that empathy towards salamanders was significantly higher in children who will participate, but has not yet participated, in the SP (treatment group). A complementary Wilcoxon rank-sum test performed on post-intervention scores for Salamander Empathy showed the same pattern. Children in the treatment group, who at this point in time have participated in the SP, showed significantly higher scores for Salamander Empathy (M = .833, SD = .187) than children who did not participated in the SP (M = .667, SD = .234) (W = 1514, p < .001). However, at this point we cannot yet understand if this difference has anything to do with participating in the SP.

Thus, we performed Wilcoxon rank-sum tests to assess if there was a significant difference before and after participating or not in the SP. For children in the control

13 group, i.e. children not participating in the SP, pre-intervention and post-intervention scores showed no significant difference (p > .2) for any of the methods employed (i.e. FlexiTwins, INS, CNI and its subscales, Salamander Empathy, WTP). Surprisingly, this is also true for children who participated in the SP (p > .3). This means that none of the methods employed, i.e. FlexiTwins, INS, CNI and its subscales, Salamander Empathy, and WTP, reported a change in children’s implicit, explicit, or intentional association with nature after participating in the SP. To further examine this result, we performed additional Wilcoxon rank-sum tests calculated on the mean difference between post- intervention and pre-intervention scores. Similarly to the results show above, none of the methods applied (i.e. FlexiTwins, INS, CNI and its subscales, Salamander Empathy, WTP) showed support for the hypothesis of Study 2 (p > .2). We conclude that the changes appreciated in study 1 do not have an equivalent numeric counterpart measurable as implicit, explicit, or intentional association with nature.

Table 1. Results from linear regression analysis examining the relationship between FlexiTwins, INS, CNI, Salamander Empathy, and WTP (response variables) and the predictor variables for gender (being a male) and participation in the SP, and session (pre VS post intervention). The table includes estimate value, t-values, p-levels, and R².

gender participation session R²

est. t est. t est. t

FlexiTwins -.123*** -3.57 -.035 -1.02 .004 .12 .048**

INS -.068** -2.81 -.007 -.29 -.011 -.47 .028*

CNI -.106*** -5.68 .023 .1.22 .005 .27 .108***

Salamander -.093*** -3.88 .122*** 5.02 -.008 -.33 .13*** Empathy

WTP -.123*** -3.57 -.035 -1.03 .004 .12 .048**

. p < .1, *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001

We completed the statistical analysis of Study 2 by performing regression analyses to control for gender since it is a known influential variable (Table 1). The results showed that gender had a significant role in explaining differences in scores for all the methods applied (i.e. FlexiTwins, INS, CNI and its subscales, Salamander Empathy, WTP). Specifically, female participants scored significantly higher in all methods (p < .01). On

14 the other hand, confirming the results shown above, participation in the SP, and whether it is before or after participating in the SP have no explanatory power.

Discussion

The hypothesis of study 2 is that changes in children’s CTN due to participation in the SP exists, and are measurable as explicit, implicit or intentional association with nature. The results of study 2 cannot confirm this hypothesis. Of all the methods applied, FlexiTwins, INS, CNI and its subscales, Salamander Empathy, and WTP, none of them has shown a significant change in explicit, implicit or intentional association with nature in children that have participated in the SP. There are two reasoning that can justify these results. The first on is that participating in the SP does not change children’s CTN. The second possibility is that children who participate in the SP go through an attitudinal change, but the methods are not suitable to evaluate it. We will discuss these options in details together with the results of study 1 in the following section, but before analyzing the combined results of the study 1 and study 2, it is worth discussing how the methods employed have evaluated children’s participation in the SP.

The analysis of implicit associations with nature shows that FlexiTwins scores do not significantly change before and after participating in the SP. However, the game of FlexiTwins also provides researchers with a value for ‘points’. These ‘points’ are the result of how fast and accurately children perform the task. They have no function in calculating implicit associations and they are only used in the computerized version of FlexiTwins to make it look more like a video game. Surprisingly, a Wilcoxon rank-sum test has shown that participants of both control and treatment group play the game significantly better the second time (post-intervention). As said above, this does not influence the calculation of implicit associations in isolation, however, it meaningfully influences the differences between pre-intervention and post-intervention scores since these two scores have different baselines. Verges and Duffy (2010) have also shown that implicit association measured by FlexiTwins is strongly linked to the positive and negative valence of the selected words themselves rather than to the categories of ‘nature’ and ‘built environment’ they intend to represent. In combination with small evaluative power shown in previous studies (Bruni et al. 2015), we conclude that FlexiTwins is a limited method for future program evaluations. On the other hand, the relational character of the INS allows to overcome the limitations that we have seen in FlexiTwins. Indeed, it does not encounter problems associated with assessing the

15 elusive concept of ‘nature’ using unbiased wording, and it does not required stable playing capacities. Given the established history in measuring personality traits (Leary, Tipsord, and Tate 2001), its accuracy in capturing CTN and its independency from other scales (Adrian Brügger, Kaiser, and Roczen 2011) we still consider the INS a quick, simple and accurate method to assess one’s implicit association with nature.

The analysis of explicit associations has shown that children attending the school responsible for the SP have statistically higher scores for Salamander Empathy both before and after participating in the SP. This result is suggestive of a pre-existing school culture of acceptance and appreciation towards salamanders. The SP has indeed run for several years and it is a proud symbol of the school (Belton 2015). However, no children are directly involved, or have any lectures about it, until they participate in grade 4. The results of four questions about empathy towards salamanders show then such measured empathy is linked, or it overlaps, with vague awareness and familiarity with the idea that salamanders are worthy animals. However, neither the complete CNI, nor its original subscale of ‘empathy towards animals’, has shown similar results. This suggests that the evaluation of children’s empathy towards salamanders is too specific to have a measurable counterpart in ‘empathy towards animals’. Both the generality of statements in the CNI (e.g. “I enjoy touching animals and plants”, or “I feel sad when wild animals are hurt”) and their specificity (e.g. “collecting rocks and shells is fun” or “I like to garden”) succumb to the same evaluative issue encountered by FlexiTwins, namely the hazy and indistinct definition of what the concept of ‘nature’ is for the participating children. The evaluative power of CNI is then hampered simultaneously by attempting a precise differentiation between distinct emotional constructs that might be largely co-defined as in the case of empathy towards salamanders, and by the generality of concepts like ‘nature’ or ‘animals’ to which they refer to.

Combining qualitative and quantitative results

The combination of study 1 and study 2 provides interesting discussion points. The most evident is the inconsistency between the qualitative evaluation in study 1 and the quantitative evaluation in study 2. In study 1 participating children articulated that their relationship towards salamanders, animals, nature, and nature conservation has changed, revealing an increased interest and familiarity towards all the above- mentioned concepts. However, the results of Study 2, a between-subject experiment

16 that used FlexiTwins, INS, CNI, Salamander Empathy, and WTP, showed no statistical change in children’s implicit, explicit, or intentional association towards nature. We discuss these results assuming three possible scenarios.

1. Participating in the SP does not trigger a change in CTN.

2. Participating in the SP does trigger a change in CTN.

3. Participating in the SP does and does not trigger an attitudinal change.

We conclude by offering a comprehensive third reasoning in which both options are true, and in which qualitative and quantitative evaluations measure co-existing components of how CTN changes over time.

Participating in the SP does not trigger a change in CTN

If participating in the SP does not trigger an attitudinal change, then why do children so firmly recognize themselves as changed in study 1? Alike any other methods, interviews can also provide biased information. Despite all precautions taken during the interviews, children might have felt the urge to state something of importance accommodating the unstated and hypothetical desires of teachers and researchers. Just by asking children about the SP, or about their feelings in such context, children might have felt the urge to express overly positive statements, and in so doing skewing the results. In this scenario we would assume that the quantitative methods employed in study 2 are of significant evaluative power, and the SP is a project too small or too short to trigger a change in CTN in children who participated. However, given the full ethnographic study of the SP provided in Belton (2015) we consider these results to be robust.

Participating in the SP does trigger a change in CTN

If participating in the SP does trigger a change in CTN, then why are attitudinal changes captured by interviews, but not by psychometric measurements? Indeed, age in childhood is quite decisively a contributing factor to determine CTN (Lieflander and Bogner 2014; Bruni and Schultz 2010). However, we also know that attitudes change slowly and over a long period of time (Kaiser et al. 2014). The two months period passing between pre-intervention and post-intervention sessions of assessment might have been insufficiently long for a significant difference in attitudes to be evaluated by the methodology employed. Hence, quantitative results might have not exhibited the

17 attitudinal change seen in study 1, not because of limiting evaluative power, but because of the inevitably short interval of time in between measurements that these interventions allow. Indeed, despite the quantitative methods employed have not being able to evaluate a change in children’s CTN after participating in the SP, when CNI was tailored specifically towards Salamander Empathy a significant result emerged for participants exposed, directly or indirectly, to the SP. However, an evaluative framework to assess numerically if practical activities reach the goal of connecting children with nature has to operate at a much shorter time frame since this is the conventional time frame at which practical interventions occur. Beyond the limitations imposed by practical time-frames, accuracy of measurement should also be considered to improve evaluative methods.

The major difference between these Salamander Empathy and ‘empathy towards animal’ is indeed accuracy (i.e. ‘animals’ versus ‘salamanders’). As salamanders are not as intangible as ‘animals’, a modified subscale of the CNI efficiently identified a pre- existing condition of greater association. We can assume that the multifaceted, and somehow arbitrary, concept of ‘nature’ might be to blame for both imprecise measurements of FlexiTwins and CNI, especially when used in non-experimental situations. Such problem could be avoided in future quantitative evaluations by specifying the tangible aspects of the ‘nature’ addressed, as in the case of Salamander Empathy. Another potential improvement for future numeric evaluations is to specifically address the relational property of one’s connection to nature as Beery and Wolf-Watz suggest (2014). For instance, INS has not being able to grasp differences between pre- intervention and post-intervention in implicit association, but its relational characteristic allowed to avoid many of the limitations shown by FlexiTwins.

Participating in the SP does and does not trigger an attitudinal change.

The overall results show that FlexiTwins, INS, CNI, Salamander Empathy and WTP might be unsuitable for evaluating change before and after a practical intervention to nurture CTN. On the other hand, the alternative approach of interviewing children about the SP might have directly influenced them into making overly positive statements about salamanders or nature in general. One element of particular interest that we have neglected so far is that the two evaluations measure different, non-overlapping, aspects of CTN.

18 Significant life experiences are identified as potential drivers for future pro-environmental behaviors and nature conservation actions (Louise Chawla 1998; Hsu 2009b). It is however reasonable to assume that their ‘happening’ is not immediately transformative of one’s identity, but transformative because they facilitate their participation in future experiences of nature. Past pro-environmental actions have indeed been shown to strengthen one’s CTN and in turn nurture further pro-environmental attitudes and intentions (Van der Werff, Steg, and Keizer 2014a; Van der Werff, Steg, and Keizer 2014b). Thus, we can assume that the attitudinal change seen in study 1 cannot be measured quantitatively because it is not a change in implicit or explicit association with nature, but a change in children’s life-trajectory. In other words, participating SP is not influential in transformative manner to a degree of CTN, but influential towards the probability that such degree will increase in the future. Participating in the SP has shifted children’s life-trajectory towards one with richer encounters with nature that will progressively nurture CTN. In this sense, participating in the SP is a significant nature experience that has not yet been fully actualized in one’s identity.

It is important to notice that in this study behavior influences attitude. Children showed that they have learnt to care because they have learnt how to take care. By picking up the first salamander by hand they overcome the ‘yuck’ barrier and then feel more comfortable and familiar with future similar behaviors. The significant experience of touching salamanders has changed what salamanders are for them, and in some cases what animals and nature are. The accumulated influence of these and any other future nature experiences will likely have clearer significant and statistical counterpart once those behaviors will have been accomplished. This has been the case for reoccurring experiences, even if marginal and indirect, that children had of the SP in their everyday life. Having the SP as a background of the day-to-day school life has been indeed significantly influential to develop empathy towards salamanders.

Because of this last consideration, accessibility to nature experiences in everyday life is of crucial importance. If significant life experiences drive a more positive attitude towards other nature interactions rather than towards nature itself, then availability and accessibility of mundane and habitudinal interactions with nature is central to progressively nurture CTN. Especially, if the goal is to connect, reconnect, or make children remain connected with nature. Measurable difference in CTN due to long-term differences in nature accessibility has already been assessed for children (Giusti, Barthel, and Marcus 2014) and the literature is increasingly recognizing the determining

19 role that space has to shape nature-friendly cognitive and emotional identities (Beery and Wolf-Watz 2014; Lewicka 2011; Ardoin et al. 2015). The link between pedagogical practices of reconnection and academic understanding of CTN seem have a specific temporal and spatial dimension that can be no longer ignored.

Concluding remarks

Evaluating existing programs that aim at connecting children to nature is a first step to understand if such programs have potential to nurture future sustainable individual and collective behaviors. Conclusive monitoring methods for these programs would allow reliable comparison within and across programs, identifying any discrepancies between intended and effective outcomes, and comparison of effectiveness among individual experiences. This evaluative framework is the stepping stone to develop a pedagogical approach capable of connecting children to nature. The quantitative methods implemented in this study (FlexiTwins, INS, CNI, WTP) have shown limited power to evaluate the project of nature conservation central to this paper. The real-world projects, which aim is to connect children to nature, require flexible and complementary evaluative methodologies capable of grasping relational and situational factors on a much shorter time scale.

We therefore invite researchers to engage in transdisciplinary approaches to advance both theory and methods and we encourage a review of existing practices with recognizable strengthening effects on children’s CTN. Additionally, we join the existing chorus of researchers (Thompson 2008; Louise Chawla 1998; Clayton 2012) who suggest the need of longitudinal studies. As CTN could be of importance for broad based future pro-environmental behaviors, a better understanding on its spatial, temporal and social dynamics, is central to not only improve scholarly practices in the field of environmental psychology and environmental education, but also to increase wider societal capacities to ensure sustainable social-ecological systems (Krasny, Lundholm, and Plummer 2010; Saunders and Myers 2003).

20 References

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25 Appendix A

Interview Guide

1. What is the best thing about the Salamander Project for you?

2. Is there anything that you think is not good about the project?

3. Do you have a special memory or story from the salamander project you could tell me about?

4. Could you explain for me how it feels to ‘work’ with salamanders?

5.How does it feel to be part of the project?

6. What was different between the first and the last time you participated in the project? (Did something feel different?)

7. Can you tell me about what you have learnt from the project?

8. Was it different to the way you learn things in the classroom? (How?)

9. In what way(s) have your feelings towards salamanders changed with the project? (if they have changed)

10. Do you feel like you have changed a bit yourself? (In what way?)

26 Inclusion of Nature in Self

The method has been used as in Schultz (2002) with the question. “Circle the picture that best describes the relationship between you and nature”. Below is the translated version in Swedish.

27 Connection to Nature Index (CNI)

The list of questions below is the translated Swedish version of the CNI used in the study.

28

Salamander Empathy

The list of questions below is the translated Swedish version of the CNI subscale ‘empathy for nature’ adjusted to assess empathy towards salamanders.

29 Cognitive Affordances in Sustainable Urbanism: Contributions of Space Syntax and Spatial

Cognition

In press in:

Journal of Urban Design

Authors:

Marcus Lars, Giusti Matteo, Barthel Stephan

Keywords: sustainable urban design, situated cognition, cognitive affordances, space syntax, spatial cognition

1 Abstract Post-industrial societies impose new ecological challenges on urbanism. However, it is here argued, that most approaches to sustainable urbanism still share the conception of the humans-environment relations that characterised modernism. The article finds support in recent knowledge developments in social-ecological sustainability, spatial analysis, and cognitive science, to initiate a dialogue for an alternative framework. Urban form engages humans not only through physical activities, but also mentally through opportunities for learning and creation of meaning, thereby both reinforcing and impeding behaviours on a cognitive level. Against this background, it is proposed that what in this article is termed cognitive affordances could form the core of a new epistemological framework of the human-environment relation in sustainable urbanism. Keywords: sustainable urban design, situated cognition, cognitive affordances, space syntax, spatial cognition

2 1. Introduction: the Challenges of Sustainable Urban Planning and Design The world is currently experiencing the most profound urbanisation process in history. Across the globe one sees the development of smart, efficient, and technologically advanced cities but also a rapid growth of unplanned and detriment cities without the most basic technological supports. At the same time, local and global sustainability issues create unprecedented challenges to urban systems. Due to the critical role of cities in allocating and impacting global human and ecological resources (Rees and Wackernagel 2008; Folke et al. 1997), urban planning and design has become a top priority in the sustainability discourse at academic, professional, as well as political levels (UNSDSN 2013). This is why many European policies call for new standards of urban development that combine environmental sustainability and social inclusiveness (Cities European Council of Town Planners 1998; European Union 2010). New conceptual approaches to urban planning and design – e.g. ecological urbanism, new urbanism, smart growth, landscape urbanism – as well as new professional standards for sustainable building – e.g. LEED and BREEAM – are typical manifestation of this struggle for more sustainable urban development. However, despite its multitude of approaches, contemporary urban planning and design is yet far from an effective response to the sustainability agenda (Rees and Wackernagel 2008). While post-industrial societies thus have imposed broad new challenges on urbanism, it is here argued that most responses to such challenges share a conception of the relation between humans and the environment that keep them aligned with the modernistic paradigm in urbanism. Typically, this took the form of listing key societal functions for which urban planning and design were to create the appropriate built environments. Thus, a set of broadly identified primary functions, such as housing and transportation, structured the conception of the relation between people and urban form. In the following it will be argued that solutions resulting from such an approach inevitably clashes with the systemic, adaptive, and locally-specific solutions required of urban design to adequately respond to sustainability demands.

3 In short, it will be argued that the urban landscapes generated under modernism and current approaches to sustainable development are similar in the following critical senses: they are (i) limited by an compartmentalised understanding of urban space denying its fundamental systemic properties; (ii) they are designed top down by experts with little participation from the communities living in them; and (iii) they address abstract human needs ignoring the cognitive processes that motivate human behaviour. In contrast, recent knowledge developments critical for urban planning and design, such as social-ecological sustainability, spatial analysis, and cognitive science, point out how urban sustainability demands a (i) systemic understanding of urban space, where the functionality of each urban area or place is conditioned by its relation to other areas or places in the city (Hillier 1996, Wilson 2000, Batty 2013), and (ii) a balance between top-down and bottom-up approaches, because urban sustainability cannot be treated separately from local communities as sustainability is a property embedded in the interdependence of social and ecological systems (Folke et al. 1997; Naveh 2000; Meadows 2008). Finally, (iii) long-term sustainable commitment, or ecological stewardship (Grove 2009; Romolini, Brinkley, and Wolf 2012), requires a balance between motivation and behaviour far greater than the instrumental human-space relationship underpinning modernistic urbanism (Kaiser et al. 2014). Hence, there is strong support for an alternative epistemological framework for these developments where the urban landscape becomes a pedagogical medium (Orr 1993; Orr 1997). Indeed, urban form engages humans not only through locations for different physical activities and uses, but also mentally by giving opportunities for learning and creation of meaning. This means that urban design can aim to connect to human cognition and processes motivating human behaviour, and thereby both reinforce and impede behaviour on a cognitive rather than on a purely physiological level. In this sense, the urban landscape is not only a physical environment setting bodily limits, but also a learning environment in which the norms and values of urban life (including those associated with sustainability) are cognitively constituted. Against this background, this article propose a new conception of the human-environment relation in urbanism, based on the latest developments in cognitive science,

4 system thinking, and sustainability science, centred in what is termed cognitive affordances. The article is composed of five consecutive sections. First, a short recap of the limitations in current conceptions of the human-environment relation. Second, an introduction to new developments in cognitive science that are deemed as critical for a truly sustainable urbanism. Third, a review of some of the basic underpinnings of space syntax research that it is argued has the ability to translate from cognitive science to the practice of urban design. Fourth, a report from an empirical study addressing the cognitive influence of urban form using space syntax based methodology. Fifth, a discussion on the above in relation to recent developments in sustainability research. Finally, a look forward by assessing the future potentials of an alternative epistemological framework in urban design based on cognitive affordances.

2. Current Limitations: the Modernist Paradigm in Sustainable Urban Design The design of spatial functionalities in the human habitat is a practice as ancient as humankind itself (Kelman 2003). Such functionality and the corresponding spatial forms in the human habitat have typically emerged over time from a process of learning-by-doing (Alexander 1964; Rapoport 1977). This implies a continuous process of co-evolution between human needs and environmental form, establishing a direct rapport between the two. However, since the industrial revolution the design of the human habitat have increasingly become the product of what Alexander called a self-conscious process, that is, the built form of cities has less been guided by a continuous dialectic process of design and use, and rather directed by idealised forms that reflect contemporary and publically shared social norms, economic beliefs, aesthetic trends, or other positions disconnected from in situ dynamics. In other words, the modern creation of the built environment fosters a detached relation between urban life and spatial form that enforces a subject-object dualism between humans and the environment. The background to this is how urbanism as a consequence of the industrial revolution came to face tremendous challenges. The self-organised system of dense urban spaces typical for the pre-industrial city could not meet the pace of

5 development of fast-industrialising cities and, more importantly, it could not adequately respond to their new requirements, especially from a sanitary standpoint (Benevolo 1968). In due course, a rational process constituted by two consecutive steps came to characterize the planning and design of human habitats: the rational identification of isolated spatial demands and the design of functional solutions expressed in built forms. This approach to urban planning and design naturally took the form of briefs listing the ‘functions’ of a project that directed the design of its spatial ‘form’. Most famous in this regard, albeit conceived on a much generalised level, is the Athens-charter, which rationalized cities as being constituted by four primary functions: production (workplaces), reproduction (housing), recreation (green areas), and transportation (tracks and roads) (Le Corbusier, 1943). Fundamentally though, there is little support for why this approach should work. Like any urban planning and design approach, in the end it rests on a conception of the human-environment relation, and the one underlying modernistic urbanism has been heavily criticised as both mechanistic and naïve (e.g. Hillier 1996). Important in the current context is the fact that even though this is generally acknowledged, there is little influence from recent developments in cognitive science and spatial cognition in the new approaches to sustainable urbanism. On the contrary, it can be argued that the differences between the first Athens charter and the new Charter of Athens1 in these respects are small, even if the latter is outspokenly in confrontation to the former. The rational identification and listing of functionalities supposedly required by urban life remains the framework of both documents, even though decisively diverging in content, reflecting the old mechanistic conception of the relation between humans and the built environment. In order to face the current sustainability challenges, it is here argued that urban design cannot simply change the primary ‘demands’ from housing, workplaces and transportation to density, mixed-use and , but rather has to deepen the epistemological understanding of the various relations between human behaviour on the one hand, and built form and physical ecosystems on the other. There is a need, it is argued, to move beyond the listing of basic functions

1 (Cities European Council of Town Planners 1998)

6 inherited from modernism that still dominate the sustainability discourse and move closer to the relation between human cognition and spatial form as found in particular urban situations. There is exciting support for such a move in recent developments in cognitive science and spatial cognition as well as urban morphology, which we will turn to later, where a two-way relationship of humans and the urban environment is gaining discursive ground; now discussed as a dynamic interactive system where both parties in the interactive relation are stressed (Altman and Rogoff, 1987; Hillier, 2002; Portugali, 2011; Kyttä et al., 2013)

3. Ways Forward: Developments in Cognitive Science and Spatial Cognition Despite being closely related to ancient philosophical issues, perhaps most famously discussed by Descartes, the relation between the mind and the physical world emerged only recently as an empirically-based field in academia. According to Gardner (1987), cognitive science originates in the mid-1950’s as a reaction to the paradigm of behaviourism. The latter initiated the study of the human mind in the first half of the 20th century by considering the mind, together with all its internal decision-making processes, as a black box not accessible to the scientific method. Hence, all cognitive processes were maintained outside the scope of scientific research. The interaction between space and human agents at this point in history, therefore, is one based on environmental stimulus and visible reaction. This model of research was subsequently questioned by Edward Tolman’s experiments on mice (1948). Tolman showed that animals were able to store and act according to more complex information than what was possible to refer to as momentous stimulus. He argued that both animals and humans were able to construct in their minds an internal representation of the external environment – what he termed a ‘cognitive map’ (Tolman 1948). His results pioneered the cognitive revolution and triggered an entire body of academic investigations on how people perceive and comprehend their environments. Kevin Lynch’s book ‘The Image of the City’ (Lynch 1960) is among the first to directly address what we now may call spatial cognition. In his book he describes the cognitive qualities of the built environment (i.e. environmental legibility), which allow humans to navigate successfully through complex spaces like cities

7 and towns. Lynch’s contribution was to make evident that certain qualities of cities are not part of the physical urban landscape, nor part of the inhabitants’ qualities, but rather, they are qualities of their dialectic relations. This insight, together with others of the time, acted as an impetus for cognitive scientists, urban designers, and human geographers to develop ecological psychology and cognitive geography. In environmental psychology Gibson’s concept of affordance expands these ideas into an ecological definition of space relating to the human perception of the environment, in opposition to the broadly applied isomorphic definition of space in physics based on the Cartesian grid (Gibson 1977; Gibson 1986). Affordances refers to the relations between the abilities of an organism and the environmental features of a situation (Greeno 1994; Goldstein 1981). The situation provides, i.e. affords, to living beings a certain set of potential activities that lie in the intersection between the current environmental features and the organism’s abilities to, first, perceive them, and then act upon them (Chemero 2003). In plain English, an affordance is non-deterministic “preconditions for activity” (Greeno 1994). At about the same time, Yi-Fu Tuan (1977) distinguished between the concepts of space and place. In his words, “space is transformed into place as it acquires definition and meaning” through direct sensorial experiences of the physical environment. The ‘cognitive map’ theorised by Tolman in 1948 seems to acquire with Tuan the complexity of human emotions and meaning, and evolves into Tuan’s concept of place. However, Tuan’s distinction between the subjective space (i.e. place), and the objective space (i.e. space) is considered largely motivated by the unquestioned Cartesian dualism that pose subjects and objects as fundamentally different and separate ontological entities (Metzger 2013). The separation between subjective mind and objective matter acts as the ontological basis for the distinction between personal place and objective space. In contrast, Gibson’s concept of affordances rejects this distinction: “[A]n affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both if you like” (Gibson 1977, p. 129). Gibson’s theory of affordance has been a vital springboard for the consecutive developments in cognition science, and, it is claimed here, it can play

8 a similar role for an urban design aiming to stretch for what here is called cognitive affordances. In extension of this discussion we find situated cognition (Brown, Collins, and Duguid 1989), which describes the cognitive process as the cognitive interaction of a person in and with situations. This means that both body and mind simultaneously act as interfaces with the affordances of the existing environment at any given point in time. Hence, situated cognition stresses that knowledge, learning, thinking, and feeling occur in situ (Durning and Artino 2011). The focus of situated cognition is not the person in itself, but the person in the experience of a situation, that is, the human condition in an environment at a given time. Hence, the everyday environment is the interface in which a person actually learn when personal abilities are enabled by situational opportunities (i.e. affordances) (Chemero 2003; Durning and Artino 2011). Abilities here, refer to the combined physical and cognitive abilities of an individual to recognise and actualise the potential affordances of an environment (Norman 1988). In situated cognition, knowing, acting, learning and forgetting are embedded properties of the constant interaction between the agent and the situation (Durning and Artino 2011). In every phase of the interaction process there is no distinction between person and environment, because both knowing and acting occur as relations to a given environmental situation (fig. 1).

Figure 1. Model of the theory of affordances explained in the context of urban design. The figure shows the interdependences between the spatial configuration of cities with its embedded affordances and situations, and linked behavioral, emotional, and cognitive processes of an inhabitant.

9 Hence one can here detect the inherent possibility in the built environment to design what, in extension of Gibson’s physical affordances, may be called cognitive affordances. Such affordances can be said to under a different name recently have entered the realm of urban design, for instance in efforts to create ‘sense of place’, however, with little success. It is argued here that these poor results are largely due to the limitations of the still dominating paradigm of modernism as discussed above; cognitive affordances, (i) cannot exist in isolated places but typically emerge as an effect of particular relations between places, (ii) cannot be imposed by expertise themselves but need to consider the ‘meanings’ of the local community, and (iii) cannot be implemented as abstract ‘demands’ but has to cognitively engage and motivate people, even if on a low key.

4. Space Syntax: Analysing the Cognitive Dimension of Urban Form Most interestingly for urban design, an entire field of research, known as Space Syntax (Hillier & Hanson 1984, Hillier 1996), bases its specific form of analysis of spatial form on a cognitive definition of space closely related to the theories of Gibson and especially his concept of affordances (e.g. Hanson 2000). In an article, tellingly called: “Studying cities to learn about minds” (2009), Hillier turns the question in cognitive science around, so to speak, and asks: “What can we learn of the human mind by examining its products?” The product he has in mind is the city and he starts with a discussion about distance – arguably the most fundamental of spatial variables. Hillier maintains that we interact with space in cities both through our bodies and through our minds. Hence we need to think of distance in two ways: “in bodily terms the city exist for us as a system of metric distances” (Ibid.), but cognitively we primarily interact with the city through seeing: “the city comes to exist for us also as a more or less complex object, with more or less visual steps required to see all parts from all others, and so as a system of visual distances” (Ibid.). Of fundamental importance in modelling this cognitive conception of distance is what in space syntax is called the ‘axial map’,2 which is a network representation of urban space using graph theory, constructed from the point of view of a

2 There are several developments of this form of representation but we will here keep to the axial map.

10 cognitive subject, here understood as a perceiving and moving human being. The axial map is made up of the least amount of straight lines that cover all accessible open space in the area of analysis, where each straight line (here called ‘axial line’) in the map represents an urban space that is possible to visually overlook and physically access for a human. Thus, the axial map can be seen as a cognitively defined network of all accessible spaces in the area it represents, where different network properties are possible to measure, for instance distances. Distance is furthermore measured topologically as amount of axial lines, why one may argue that what is measured are cognitive distances in the axial map. The argument here is that if we make a straight line crooked “we do not add significantly to the energy effort required to move along it, but we do add greatly to the informational effort required” (Hillier 2003). In other terms, the axial line comprises not only physical distance but also, as it were, cognitive distance. The strength of this approach is empirically supported by a long series of studies over the world demonstrating consistent ability to predict pedestrian movement, which seems to be explained by this ability to represent the urban environment in accordance with human cognition (E.g. Kim et al., 2013; Karimi et al., 2015). Implied in Hillier’s argument is that cities, as products of bottom-up incremental processes over long time, have tended to evolve towards environments that support spatial cognition; in Gibson’s terms we could say that they have come to afford human intelligibility. Hillier draws the conclusion that: “human geometric intuitions seem to be embedded in the city itself” (Hillier 2009). The step is then not far to claim, as Hillier and Portugali (2011) do, that cities, as the physical objects we generally envision them to be, also are cognitive objects, that is, they are not something only out there, but also a kind of extensions of the human mind. Against this background the axial map is a simple geometric representation of the visibility and mobility affordances of the built environment that make it possible to measure distance in a manner distinctly based on human perception and cognition. As such it overcomes, just as embodied and situated cognition, the criticized separation of subject from object and rather represents urban space as

11 an extension of the human mind as embedded in the environment (Conroy Dalton 2005; Marcus 2015). In the aim to also empirically support the alternative epistemological framework here proposed for sustainable urban design, the next section will demonstrate how links between space syntax theory and the concept cognitive affordances can be empirically analysed, by reporting from a study of variations in children’s tacit environmental learning by nature routines in cities.

5. Example: Effects of Affording Interaction with Nature in Cities Linking space syntax theory with cognitive affordances in urban social-ecological systems enables possibilities to assess how spatial form support or inhibit accessibility to cognitive affordances that promote sustainability (Lin et al. 2014). Nature experiences connected to learning, recreation and health are in this context often argued to be of primal importance for in cities (Hartig et al., 2014; Bratman et al., 2015; Kabisch et al., 2015). The importance of the cognitive dimension for the design of the urban green infrastructure is also central for spatial accessibility. When the social dimension, in terms of recreational value and personal satisfaction, is introduced in the evaluation of green environments, the nature experiences that are perceived as more valuable are of local and small areas, rather than of regional or national nature reserves (Soga et al. 2015). Also, another study shows that “nature orientation is a more important driver of time spent in parks than the availability of green space” (Lin et al. 2014). That means that people who have developed a closer connection towards nature even in cities is likely to spend more time overall both in parks and in their yard (Ibid.). To further illustrate and support this argument we draw here on a specific empirical study that analysed the relation between the varied spatial distribution of potential interaction with nature in the urban landscape and the cognitive effects on urban children (Giusti et al., 2014). The study investigated if the spatial separation of humans from natural environments in cities can be a proxy for an emotional and cognitive distance from nature. The study was underpinned by the following research question: does the absence of nature experiences in urban areas correlate with reduced affinity with nature in preschool children?

12 The design of preschools has already been widely acknowledged to be of importance for children’s indoor learning experience, but it is here asked whether this also is true for outdoor learning experiences, including what is found outside the gates of the preschool in question. The study used pre-existing GIS-data on social-ecological features3 of Stockholm to map the distribution of nature experiences in the whole municipality. Then, it analysed preschool accessibility to and frequency of use of such nature experiences using the cognitive distance measure developed in space syntax (Ståhle et al, 2005), which make use of the cognitively based distance measures explicated above. Finally, children’s closeness to nature was compared between children who have been for many years in preschools with the highest frequency of use of nature experiences and in preschools with the lowest. The study shows that the spatial accessibility to urban nature in Stockholm significantly (p < .05) correlates to children’s 1) ability to distinguish living from lifeless entities, 2) degree of empathy for non-human life forms, 3) degree of concern for environmental degradation, 4) degree of awareness of the harmful effects of environmental pollution, and finally, 5) ability to recognize the role of ecological resources in the production of everyday objects (Giusti, et al., 2014). These results resonate with the empirical studies presented above. In this study, spatial accessibility to nature routines is correlated with acquired cognitive abilities. Children who have had limited nature routines, because of what the urban landscape around their preschool is offering, developed 16% significant lower connection with nature (Ibid.). These results clearly indicate the interdependence between the spatial patterns of the designed urban landscape, and the cognitive patterns emerging from it. The intentional design of the very urban forms has therefore the potential to remind, cherish or neglect the interdependence of human and ecological well being, which implies that the cognitive affordances present in the urban landscape are of prime importance for the design of sustainable urbanism (fig. 2).

3 The Sociotope map of Stockholm, see Ståhle 2008.

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Figure 2. Model of the results of Giusti et al., 2014 in relation to the theory of affordances. Children with poor nature routines because of the spatial configuration of their preschool’s surroundings have developed significantly lower emotional and cognitive appreciation of the bond between humankind and nature.

6. Discussion: Relating Cognitive Affordances to Sustainability Research These results support a growing scientific discourse about sustainability that makes evident that the relationship between humankind and nature in our contemporary human habitats should be reconsidered (Kellert and Wilson 1993; Folke et al. 2011). Tremendous technological advancements derived from the industrial revolution have immensely fostered human wellbeing in the last centuries. However, it has also enforced a separation between humans and other forms of life which may have undesirable side effects (Vining, Merrick, and Price 2008; Vining 2003). One may say that the epistemological framework of modernism, based on a clear separation between humans and nature, has been built into the physical fabric of our environments, and in so doing into the very foundation of our everyday routines, creating obstacles for the development of cognitive frames necessary to support sustainable actions. The idealized position of humans in the biosphere has also been designed into the spatial organization of urban nature. For instance, the urban landscape has marked boundaries within which human existence is designed to be nearly exclusive and ‘wild nature’, if still existent, is meant to be kept outside of the boundaries of the human habitat (Pavia 2012). This means that despite the fact that the biosphere is the life- support system of humanity, a great proportion of humanity in the near future may loose the opportunity to experience and truly understand such dependence on the ecological system. Hence, by not realising how urban design by necessity

14 creates cognitive affordances of this kind, urban dwellers may unintentionally be deprived of the possibility to develop an emotional and cognitive connection with nature in line with sustainable development. The consequences of such cognitive detachment from our life support system are not yet fully explored, but the loss of nature experiences is widely indicated to reinforce a sense of disaffection and disengagement with nature that fails to nurture climate-responsible or nature-passionate societies (Wells and Lekies 2006; Chawla 2007; Chawla 1999; Pyle 1993; Miller 2005). In short, urban planning and design still fails to consider the human life-support system as an essential part of urban dynamics. It is here therefore argued that there is need for an alternative epistemological framework in urban design that may better support sustainable development. Hence, largely due to the limited conception of the human-environment relation on which urban form currently is produced, the awareness of how urban design creates not only physical afrordances but also cognitive affordances has been limited. One may from the study presented above, for instance, assume that urban and landscape design in cities manipulates the normality of what ‘nature’ is for many urban inhabitants. Similarly, it worsen the process of environmental generational amnesia, in which generation after generation re-establishes what society recognizes as ‘normal’ in terms of accepted degree of pollution (Kahn Jr 2002). Hence, the degraded and limited forms of nature one today often find in cities may end up being what most urban citizens considers and expects ‘nature’ to be. Hence, the ‘editing’ of the biosphere one finds within city boundaries, which has been designed in this way, would be recognized by current and coming generations as ‘normal nature’. Given the everyday experience of a degraded nature, urban dwellers may even prefer the protection of the urban ‘domesticated nature’ to the diversity of ecosystems that truly supports our civilizations. One may conclude that as the urban population of the world is projected to surpass 6.3 billion by 2050 (UN 2012) urban spaces that nurture nature routines are increasingly needed to support the re-connection with the biosphere that many scholars in the sustainability sciences now start calling for (Folke et al. 2011; Bragg 1996; Samways 2007; Miller 2005).

15 7. Looking Forward: Design of Cognitive Affordances In conclusion, this paper present researchers and practitioners in urban planning and design with insights in recent research in cognition science and urban morphology, that may support an alternative epistemological framework, where the relation between humans and the environment, rather than a mechanistic subject-object relation, is constituted by a deep and continuous dialectic exchange. More precisely, attention has been directed to the possibility to inform professional practice in urban design to such an alternative framework by linking urban form, by way of space syntax methodology, to cognitive affordances in urban social-ecological systems. Such an alternative epistemological framework and methodological approach may enable professionals to consider cognitive affordances that affiliate people with nature as an essential part of urban design in the broad aim to redirect urban processes into more sustainable trajectories. In line with what has been presented above, urban form does not only facilitate the ‘functions’ or ‘demands’ for which it has been created, but inevitably also embeds cognitive and emotional knowledge and meaning. In this sense, urban design is a professional practice where the central material, spatial form, is a medium that ‘edits’ the ‘realities’ of the city. Hence, it is implicit in the argument above that what is edited out, or what is made manifest in public space through the structuring of spatial form, has a direct impact on our daily experiences and in extension also on the development of our assumptions. Put differently, urban design fundamentally concerns what entities and dimensions of the world we choose to make manifest. Importantly, this has not so much to do with the messages conveyed by built physical form in itself, as its spatial structure and how this affords individual and social behaviours; that is, not so much with how organic physical form in buildings themselves may express ‘nature’, as how the spatial form of public space includes and presents real ‘nature’ and even affords interaction with it. It is this that truly may be called cognitive affordances, and that may shape the mindset of people moving through urban space interacting with what is there. As an illustration one may consider the cognitive activity while travelling to work or school everyday – that is, between the two primary modernist functions housing and work by way of a third, transportation. It may seem a bland

16 experience, but such commuting actually results in intense cognitive processes, such as checking changes in familiar environments and observing details in people’s clothing or facial expressions, which, albeit mundane, constantly re- defines one’s relation to the ever-surrounding social-ecological system as well as one’s own role in it (e.g. Goffman 1963). In short what has been argued here is that such processes, on the long term, are part of sustaining society as much as the energy efficiency of the commuter trains we may be travelling on. The crucial point for urban design is that the set of affordances that one cognises in these processes are ‘edited’ through urban design, both by way of who and what that is made present and who and what that is hidden by making it part of or not making it part of public space. Not least important here is in what context, that is, its relation to other entities, that it is made part of public space - what one meets in public space is in this sense not simply something given but something edited or designed. Envisioning ourselves on the commuter train again, these moments of embodied and situated cognition can be compared to reading the morning paper; the environment one travels to work in presents an edited version of current society, including its ecological dimension, just as much as the newspaper one may be reading at the same time; some things are stressed and explicated at length, others are quickly passed by or simply left out. It could be argued that the affordances of the urban landscape have a weaker impact on one’s mindset than a newspaper, which is more forcefully edited and emphatically expressed in abstracted messages. However, one may also argue that the daily commuting experiences, being a personal experience in real life and not a more obviously mediated experience, has a much stronger impact on one’s mood, thoughts, and overall holistic understanding of the social-ecological dynamics in which one lives. The tentative character of the concept of cognitive affordances at this stage has to be acknowledged. Nonetheless, the potential of this concept within a much- needed alternative epistemological framework for sustainable urban design, is difficult to ignore. The cognitive approach in urban analysis introduced by space syntax methodology combined with scientific innovation in spatial cognition, create a tool that promise support in this direction for professionals in urban design. In the near future we will build urban landscapes for another ca. 2.7

17 billion people on planet Earth. The way the everyday experiences of these people will be ‘edited’ through urban planning and design may have a staggering effect on which kind of sustainable future they together will choose.

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