• This article (2009) discusses issues related to urban sustainability. Though modern cities with high settlement densities offer some environmental, economical, and social advantages, it may impose excessive psychological demands. These demands increase our desire for contact with nature.

Research in environmental psychology suggests, that contact with nature has an important implication: psychological restoration. Designing communities that balance settlement density with an access to nature could be an important application in achieving urban sustainability. Contact with nature offers restoration from stress and mental fatigue compared to ordinary outdoor urban environments. This review article considers how urban greenery might promote urban sustainability considered in social and psychological as well as physical terms.

Compact cities are often considered sustainable: living closer to shops and works allows residents to walk, bike, or use public transportation instead of their car; they increase social cohesion, equity, and accessibility; and they are economically viable, as infrastructure, such as roads, can be provided cost-effectively per capita. However, there is tension between the efficiency of a compact city, and human desire for a spacious, green, and quiet environment.

According to the attention restoration theory, natural environments provide opportunities for psychological restoration, because transactions with natural environments possess several qualities that emerge less commonly in urban scenery. Nature is more often considered beautiful and safe, whereas cities in turn are considered as dangerous, dirty, and unhealthy.

This study concludes, that:

• Empirical studies show, that people’s desire for contact with nature is more than naive rural romanticism; it may even reflect an evolutionary heritage
• Modern humans are still born with a predisposition to like or prefer certain features common to natural but not to urban or other built environments

Abandoning high-density cities is not desirable from a psychological point of view either, as it does have many advantages by offering lively, vibrant, and desirable places to live for many people. Instead, cities should be planned by combining the benefits of compact cities and green spaces that support restoration. Researcher suggest, that urban nature is a design option that promotes urban sustainability: cities must also be green in the sense of making nature present.