Why Nature Is Essential to Human Flourishing
Part Three: Natural Infrastructure
This will be the third and final installment of my series on the benefits of nature on our physical and mental wellbeing. In part one, I explored how time in nature can calm our minds and shift our perspective, while part two looked at ways to make that connection part of our daily lives. In this final article, I turn to how we can design our cities with nature in mind, both in terms of recreation and enjoyment, but also as part of our infrastructure to help our communities respond to heat, floods, and drought.
Urban Nature
The value of nature has implications beyond individual self-care. Bratman and colleagues describe its benefits as “psychological ecosystem services” which make valuable contributions to human well-being, alongside services such as clean water, food, and climate regulation. This perspective suggests that trees, parks, gardens, waterways, wetlands, and other natural features should be treated as part of a community’s health infrastructure. Urban-planning decisions affect whether people have regular opportunities to encounter nature and whether those spaces feel safe, accessible, and welcoming. The size and location of green spaces needs to be considered, but so does tree cover, biodiversity, maintenance, sensory qualities, and the activities those spaces support (Bratman et al., 2019).
However, access is not distributed equally, with economically disadvantaged communities often having fewer safe green spaces, while disability, transportation, work schedules, and caregiving responsibilities can create additional barriers. At the same time, modern lifestyles increasingly involve indoor, screen-based, and sedentary activity. Researchers warn that declining contact with nature can become a self-reinforcing cycle when each generation has fewer direct experiences of the natural world, diminished access and environmental degradation may gradually begin to feel normal (Bratman et al., 2019).
This concern is reflected in a recent report that almost half of adults in the United Kingdom spend fewer than three hours a week in natural settings. Making nature accessible is not simply a matter of encouraging better personal habits, it also needs to be a priority in public policy and equitable community design (van der Zee, 2026).
Beyond Utility
Modern development often evaluates spaces according to measurable functions like how many people a building can accommodate, how efficiently traffic moves, how much a project costs, or how much economic activity it generates. These metrics are important, but they do not capture the full picture of how we experience those spaces.
In a previous issue of Invested, I wrote an article which argues that modern urban design too often prioritizes function while neglecting beauty and experience. So many modern spaces meet technical requirements but feel alienating, monotonous, or emotionally barren. Thoughtfully designed hospitals, workplaces, neighbourhoods, and public spaces on the other hand, can reduce stress, promote social connection, as well as cultivate belonging and community pride.
Nature and natural elements make this easy by being both beautiful and practical. Something small like a living wall inside an office building helps purify the air, rooftop gardens help cool buildings and downtown centres as well as offer space for urban food production, and parks provide homes for wildlife.
Utrecht in the Netherlands is an example of what it looks like when a city comes together to reintegrate nature. A section of the Catharijnesingel canal was drained for a road in the 1960’s which negatively affected the city’s public spaces leading to a referendum in 2002 to bring the canal back. The canal was finally restored and opened in 2020, replacing traffic with water, walking routes, trees, and places to sit and gather. The project reconnects the city with its history while making everyday contact with nature possible (Public Space, 2025).
The change was part of a wider shift in the city which writer Mark Wagenbuur documents in a 17-year visual record of Utrecht. Wagenbuur describes streets that have gained trees, seating, and space for walking and cycling as through traffic and surface parking have receded. He also points to the practical value of greenery in cooling streets and retaining rainwater, so the same space can make daily life more inviting while helping build a city’s resilience to heat and heavy rain (Wagenbuur, 2026).
Natural Solutions
Healthy ecosystems can also provide practical solutions to some of the difficult environmental problems confronting modern communities. The World Resources Institute makes the case that restoring ecosystems can reduce exposure to heat, flooding, and wildfire. Urban trees provide shade and evaporative cooling, while wetlands hold and filter water, and healthier forests can be more resilient to severe fires (Dasgupta, 2026).
Canadian cities are testing these ideas through “sponge city” design. Rain gardens, vegetated channels, permeable surfaces, and healthy soil catch rainfall where it lands, filter it, and release it more slowly. In Vancouver, the four-block St. George Rainway is designed to absorb approximately 17,000 cubic metres of rainwater annually. Winnipeg’s John Hirsch Place combines greenery with engineered soil and below-ground cells that support tree roots and help store runoff. These projects do not eliminate the need for sewers, but they show how cities can manage water while becoming greener and more welcoming (Jokinen, 2026).
Another remarkable example of a natural solution comes from London, when in 2023, five beavers were released into Paradise Fields, a 10-hectare urban wetland near Greenford Underground station. Beavers had been absent from London for approximately 400 years after being hunted to local extinction. Their reintroduction was initially intended to restore habitat and biodiversity, but project advocates also believed that the animals’ natural engineering could address persistent flooding in the surrounding neighbourhood. When the beavers did precisely what their species has evolved to do and built dams, they helped protect nearby streets and Greenford station from flooding that had previously been occurring yearly after heavy rain. Project staff reported that the station had not flooded since the beavers arrived, saving the local council from resorting to expensive conventional engineering solutions (Stewart, 2026).
And the benefits have extended beyond flood control when the beavers’ activity transformed the site into a more complex wetland, creating deadwood and aquatic habitat for insects, fish, birds, and other wildlife, with project staff observing new and increased populations of each. The beavers also became a source of public interest, drawing visitors to guided wildlife tours bringing in unexpected monetary gains as well (Stewart, 2026).
The effects of beaver engineering reach beyond this London site. In Oregon, beaver created ponds, and slow-moving channels provide shelter for young salmon, while the wetlands they create retain water and can interrupt the spread of fire. However, beavers can also flood roads or farmland, so successful restoration requires landowners and conservationists to work together (Buhay, 2026).
A related example at the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate in Somerset in the United Kingdom shows how restoring natural settings can help mitigate the effects of drought. After river restoration, wetland creation, and beaver reintroduction, restored areas remained visibly green during this year’s dry summer while the surrounding countryside was made up of dry brown fields. The Trust says these changes retain moisture during drought and slow water during storms, while supporting wildlife and local grazing (Hughes, 2026).
How these ideas take shape depends on the place, as land values, existing roads, funding, maintenance, and soil conditions all affect what is possible. And when restoring wildlife to a landscape you need to consider how to manage the impact on nearby existing infrastructure and farmland. Additionally, many regulations do not always require developers to preserve meaningful natural areas, which can make these spaces harder to protect (Wageningen University & Research, 2024).
The examples in this article show how much natural features can contribute to a space. In each case, nature serves a practical purpose while adding beauty and life to the surroundings.
Bibliography
Buhay, C. (2026). Beavers are having a moment. Reasons to Be Cheerful. https://reasonstobecheerful.world/beavers-big-moment/
Dasgupta, A. (2026). The best defense against ‘natural’ disasters is nature itself. WRI. https://www.wri.org/insights/restoring-nature-fights-wildfires-heat-floods
Hughes, A. (2026). Drought has ravaged the UK but this one nature site has been left untouched – this is how. Countryfile. https://www.countryfile.com/news/drought-has-ravaged-the-uk-but-this-one-nature-site-has-the-solution
Jokinen, T. (2026). What if your city were a sponge? This urban planning strategy could help solve flooding. Giant. https://www.begiant.ca/stories/places/sponge-cities-flooding-canada begiant.ca
Public Space. (2025). Catharijnesingel. Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. https://www.publicspace.org/works/-/project/m357-catharijnesingel
Stewart, B. (2026). Leave it to the beavers: How the industrious mammals are helping to stop a London tube station from flooding. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/london-beavers-9.7238399
van der Zee, B. (2026). ‘It’s a great healer’: Why being outdoors in nature means so much to us. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/31/why-being-outdoors-in-nature-means-so-much-to-us
Wagenburr, M. (2026). Utrecht: Seventeen years of change. Bicycle Dutch. https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2026/07/01/utrecht-seventeen-years-of-change/
Wageningen University & Research. (2024). Seven reasons to invest in a green city. https://www.wur.nl/en/longread/seven-reasons-invest-green-city