Maas and colleagues greatly enlarge the empirical scale of the green-space hypothesis by examining 250,782 people registered with 104 Dutch general practices. Green space within one- and three-kilometre radii is related to perceived general health through multilevel logistic regression, with the association remaining significant across degrees of urbanity and becoming stronger for several lower socioeconomic and age groups. The paper’s iconic idea is that green space is not an amenity added after the “real” city has been organised; it is part of the health-producing structure of the living environment. Its methodological contribution lies in connecting fine-grained spatial exposure with large population data while explicitly testing urbanity, age and socioeconomic differentiation. This also sharpens the political meaning of restoration: unequal access to green environments can become a question of environmental justice. The wider bridge reaches directly into spatial planning, where distribution, proximity and quantity of greenery become public-health variables rather than merely landscape-design preferences.
