Ward Thompson and colleagues make a critical correction to deterministic accounts of green space: environmental quantity alone does not explain health. In four deprived Scottish communities, social isolation and place belonging emerge as powerful predictors, while gardens, allotments, neighbourhood green-space quantity, seasonal use and views from home enter the model in different ways. The iconic idea is therefore not that green space “causes” wellbeing, but that environmental and social conditions are entangled infrastructures of stress mitigation. Methodologically, objective green-space measurement is placed beside self-report, social variables and health outcomes, producing a genuinely socio-environmental model. The study’s bridge to urban theory is especially strong because it undermines the habit of treating ecological provision as a purely morphological variable. A park can exist without being socially usable; vegetation can be present without generating belonging; access can be nominal rather than lived. Environmental benefit depends on spatial provision, everyday practices, social relations and the capacity to inhabit a place without exclusion.
