…we understand this instinctively in moments of vulnerability. Hospices, healing centres, and retreats are intentionally green, quiet, and contemplative. We surround the sick and the dying with gardens, yet design everyday living environments as though the healthy do not need healing
AS we step into a new year, perhaps it is time to reset how we think about our environment.
Recently, I was reminded, through personal experience and stories shared with me—that time spent in gardens and wooded spaces can do what medication sometimes cannot: calm the body, restore balance, and heal quietly.
Nature is not decoration; it is medicine.
Yet, in many of our urban developments today; even at the very top end, we see oversized buildings pressed tightly onto plots, trees erased, gardens sacrificed, and every square metre optimised for ROI. Comfort, serenity, and long-term well-being are treated as optional.
This reflects a poverty of the mind mentality.
A mindset that equates wealth with mass, value with volume, and success with maximum extraction.
It fails to recognise that true luxury is not density, but breathing space; not height, but harmony; not ROI alone, but wellbeing.
Ironically, we understand this instinctively in moments of vulnerability. Hospices, healing centres, and retreats are intentionally green, quiet, and contemplative. We surround the sick and the dying with gardens, yet design everyday living environments as though the healthy do not need healing.
This contradiction should trouble us.
As we begin a new year, perhaps the reset we need is not merely economic or political, but philosophical. We must stop designing only for returns and start designing for human endurance.
Greening is not anti-development. It is not sentimental. It is not waste.
It is preventive healthcare, environmental intelligence, and long-term value creation.
A city that cannot breathe will eventually make its people sick—no matter how premium the address.
This is also a call for a reset in governance. Urban regulatory bodies must do more than issue approvals; they must enforce planning guidelines, protect open spaces, insist on greenery, and resist the quiet erosion of standards in the name of profit.
If this new year must stand for anything, let it be this:
that we finally understand that wealth without wellbeing is not prosperity—it is simply accumulation.
Sometimes, the most radical investment is not another floor…
but the humility to leave room for a garden. 🌱
Here’s wishing all my readers a happy, prosperous and green 2026.