De Vries and colleagues provide an early epidemiological articulation of greenness as a property of the residential environment rather than an exceptional destination. By combining self-reported health data from more than 10,000 Dutch residents with GIS-based land-use measures, the paper asks whether the amount of green space around where people live predicts health after socioeconomic, demographic and urbanity effects are controlled. The association is positive across three health indicators and becomes particularly suggestive among groups more dependent on their immediate surroundings, including older people, housewives and lower-educated populations. Methodologically, the study’s key operation is scalar: green exposure is calculated around residential locations and later differentiated between nearer and more distant zones, turning environmental proximity into an analysable variable. Conceptually, it displaces “nature” from scenery to ordinary spatial exposure. Its wider importance lies in establishing a bridge between environmental psychology, GIS, epidemiology and planning, where neighbourhood form becomes a plausible determinant of population health.
