Eight years ago, in May, a large crowd staged a sit-in at Gezi Park, next to Taksim Square, Istanbul s bustling public plaza in the downtown of its European side. People wanted to save the park s 600 trees that would soon be cut to clear space for a massive Ottoman-style shopping mall. What started as a local environmental movement quickly snowballed into a national agitation against heavy-handed government tactics.
The Gezi Park demonstration also revealed something fundamental and even universal: people s ecopsychology the emotional connection between humans and nature. When that connection is severed, humans feel pain. A growing body of research indicates that contact with natural environments contributes to improved health and psychological wellbeing. This is particularly evident in dense urban areas.