Layers of landscape, layers of recovery
The effect of public open space on mental health recovery is tightly linked to social and cultural
experience of place as well as its physical and material assets and features. The process of research
initially defined three aspects of public space—material and environmental features, social phenomena
and cultural/symbolic attributes of space, but these elements were overlaid with one another and
interacted in different ways for different people throughout the recovery process; for example, it seemed
that social factors were key in determining how the material features contributed to recovery. It was
evident that episodic exposures to material and tangible aspects of place were tied together with social
and symbolic values and understood best in a context of social, cultural and ideological meanings that
were embedded in people’s experiences. Understanding stimulus in urban open space is not enough
to explain recovery processes.