Parks help lift the spirits of city dwellers

TBILISI - Sad city dwellers should seek solace in a local park, according to a survey tracking tweets that showed a walk in leafy surroundings lifts morale among Twitter users. Trees in cities are already credited with cooling and cleaning the air, along with absorbing planet-warming gases, but a team of researchers from the University of Vermont in the United States found they also increase happiness.

"Visiting parks leads people to being happier," the survey's lead researcher, Aaron Schwartz, told Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. The authors scanned thousands of Twitter messages posted by more than 4,600 people from 160 parks and other leafy areas, like squares and playgrounds, in San Francisco between May and August 2016 for words indicating glee and elation.

The posts were then compared with messages the same users sent out before and after the green stroll.