The DOI matches its Crossref record; 8 of the 8 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Green cities and health: a question of scale?
Open accessAbstract
Background: Cities are expanding and accommodating an increasing proportion of the world's population. It is important to identify features of urban form that promote the health of city dwellers. Access to green space has been associated with health benefits at both individual and neighbourhood level. We investigated whether a relationship between green space coverage and selected mortality rates exists at the city level in the USA. Methods: An ecological cross-sectional study. A detailed land use data set was used to quantify green space for the largest US cities (n=49, combined population of 43 million). Linear regression models were used to examine the association between city-level ‘greenness’ and city-level standardised rates of mortality from heart disease, diabetes, lung cancer, motor vehicle fatalities and all causes, after adjustment for confounders. Results: There was no association between greenness and mortality from heart disease, diabetes, lung cancer or automobile accidents. Mortality from all causes was significantly higher in greener cities. Conclusions: While considerable evidence suggests that access to green space yields health benefits, we found no such evidence at the scale of the American city. In the USA, greener cities tend also to be more sprawling and have higher levels of car dependency. Any benefits that the green space might offer seem easily eclipsed by these other conditions and the lifestyles that accompany them. The result merits further investigation as it has important implications for how we increase green space access in our cities.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings
Hartig, T., Evans, G. W., Jamner, L. D., Davis, D. S., & Gärling, T. (2003) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0272-4944(02)00109-3 · Cited by 2,118
Self-citationGreen space, urbanity, and health: how strong is the relation?
Maas, J., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P. P., de Vries, S., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2006) · Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health · doi:10.1136/jech.2005.043125 · Cited by 1,976
Environmental factors associated with adults' participation in physical activity A review
Humpel, N. (2002) · American Journal of Preventive Medicine · doi:10.1016/s0749-3797(01)00426-3 · Cited by 1,783
de Vries, S., Verheij, R. A., Groenewegen, P. P., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2003) · Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space · doi:10.1068/a35111 · Cited by 1,258
The Nature of the View from Home: Psychological Benefits
Kaplan, R. (2001) · Environment and Behavior · doi:10.1177/00139160121973115 · Cited by 1,172
The mental and physical health outcomes of green exercise
Pretty, J., Peacock, J., Sellens, M., & Griffin, M. (2005) · International Journal of Environmental Health Research · doi:10.1080/09603120500155963 · Cited by 1,128
Nocon, M., Hiemann, T., Müller-Riemenschneider, F., Thalau, F., Roll, S., & Willich, S. N. (2008) · European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention & Rehabilitation · doi:10.1097/hjr.0b013e3282f55e09 · Cited by 1,080
Tanasescu, M., Leitzmann, M. F., Rimm, E. B., & Hu, F. B. (2003) · Circulation · doi:10.1161/01.cir.0000066906.11109.1f · Cited by 329
Cited by
Hartig, T., Mitchell, R., de Vries, S., & Frumkin, H. (2014) · Annual Review of Public Health · doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-032013-182443 · Cited by 3,638
Self-citationExploring pathways linking greenspace to health: theoretical and methodological guidance
Markevych, I., Schoierer, J., Hartig, T., Chudnovsky, A., Hystad, P., Dzhambov, A. M., de Vries, S., Triguero-Mas, M., Brauer, M., Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J., et al. (2017) · Environmental Research · doi:10.1016/j.envres.2017.06.028 · Cited by 2,543
Self-citationStreetscape greenery and health: Stress, social cohesion and physical activity as mediators
de Vries, S., van Dillen, S. M. E., Groenewegen, P. P., & Spreeuwenberg, P. (2013) · Social Science & Medicine · doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.06.030 · Cited by 991
Self-citationvan den Berg, M., Wendel-Vos, W., van Poppel, M., Kemper, H., van Mechelen, W., & Maas, J. (2015) · Urban Forestry & Urban Greening · doi:10.1016/j.ufug.2015.07.008 · Cited by 852
Rook, G. A. (2013) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1313731110 · Cited by 760
Metadata
- Authors
- Richardson, E. A., Mitchell, R., Hartig, T., de Vries, S., Astell-Burt, T., & Frumkin, H.
- Venue
- Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2011-10-14
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 160-165
- ISSN
- 0141-7681 (ISSN-L)
- 0143-005X
- 1470-2738
- OpenAlex
- W2147031808
- Cited by
- 187
- References
- 8
- FWCI
- 6.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Green cities and health: a question of scale? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1136/jech.2011.137240
- The paper
- Richardson, E. A., Mitchell, R., Hartig, T., de Vries, S., Astell-Burt, T., & Frumkin, H. (2012). Green cities and health: a question of scale? Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. https://doi.org/10.1136/jech.2011.137240
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.