Philip Hewett tells us why it really is good for us to take a stroll in the park (preferably one filled with trees). For the tree at your doorstep is the forest in your mind.

Why do so many of us want to live in cities?” asks Dr Cecil Konijnendijk, Danish researcher and leader of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO) research group. “People are social animals, like ants, but why do we seemingly prefer ant-heaps of concrete, steel and tarmac over the rolling hills of the countryside?”

“Cities are places where a certain energised crowding of people takes place”, says architectural historian Spiro Kostof in his book ‘The City Shaped’. He concluded his work on city design by expressing his admiration for the city as a human phenomenon: “the city is one of the most remarkable, one of the most enduring of human artefacts and human institutions”.