This week’s Ideas section in the Boston Globe includes a must-read essay by Jonah Lehrer called “How the City Hurts Your Brain… And What You Can Do About It.” The scientific hook for Lehrer’s piece has to do with experiments showing that people exposed to trees and birds are better at mental tasks than are people who have to battle cars and pedestrians:

A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren’t distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cellphone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception — we are telling the mind what to pay attention to — takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing power.

Lehrer is not recommending a mass exodus to small towns. Besides being oxymoronic, this strategy overlooks the intellectual benefits of being in an environment full of distractions and surprises. But he does suggest that we keep bits of nature accessible for city residents, which strengthens the argument for an “urban forest”  and vindicates Boston’s “Emerald Necklace” model of stretching green space all over the city instead of packing it into a Central Park. Though born of necessity, Boston’s serpentine Greenway — expensive as it is to maintain —  also seems to be preferable to what Lehrer describes as savannah-like “expansive civic lawns, punctuated by a few trees and playing fields,” which do not seem to have the same mental benefits as arboretums and such.

But I wonder whether there are “unnatural” forms of mental relief from urban bustle.

Lehrer writes: “Natural settings are full of objects that automatically capture our attention, yet without triggering a negative emotional response.” He’s talking about falling leaves and frolicking squirrels, but there are man-made objects that capture our attention without triggering fear or anxiety. How about street musicians? How about trains, which are reassuringly predictable in their movements (if not their frequency)? Did trainspotting arise from urban dwellers searching for a natural rhythm in the midst of chaos? And can a working harbor, with interesting but nonthreatening boat traffic, be as calming as birds flitting among trees?

As Billie Holiday sang in “I Cover the Waterfront“:

Away from the city that hurts and knocks,
I’m standing alone by the desolate docks
In the still and the chill of the night
I see the horizon the great unknown

Sounds better than a walk around Walden Pond to me.