We did it!
Children Need Places Like Cahuenga Peak
By Richard Louv | 02.09.10 | share | leave a comment
As the world urbanizes, what one pundit has called "the pandemic of nature-deficit disorder" will threaten human health. In 1800, three percent of the world's population lived in cities, today, more than half are urban-dwellers. In many ways it's a small miracle that we now have the opportunity to protect 138 pristine natural acres of land in a city as urbanized as Los Angeles.
Urban life, by itself, is not intrinsically bad for human health and spirit, but the kind of urban life many of us are living is. Science tells us that creative play and exposure to nature play a huge role in the healthy development and well-being of children.
If Cahuenga Peak is protected from residential development, then today's and future generations of children will be able to hike its trails and experience raw nature in the middle of a city of 10,393,185 million people.
Will our generation be the last to remember a time when it was considered normal and expected for children to stand in a beautiful natural setting and wonder? If we take that memory with us when we leave this earth, what will that say? Or, could we be the generation that chooses to turn the tide?
Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.