Houstonians aren’t taking many trips to the park — and a recent study suggests that could be a missed opportunity for better mental health.
Anonymized cellphone location tracking data shows Houston-area residents made the fewest visits to greenspaces in 2021 among nine of the largest metro areas in the country, according to findings published earlier this year in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. The study also found an association between more greenspace visits and better mental health, with the 10-county Houston metro area showing the strongest relationship.
The findings add to a growing body of research suggesting parks — when used by the public — have wide-ranging positive impacts on residents.
A Kinder Institute for Urban Research report published in 2023 found the city of Houston ranked in the middle of the pack for per capita spending on parks and greenspaces among the 13 largest U.S. cities between 2021 and 2023. Spending by the city government was especially low, though robust investment by other local agencies — including county precincts and tax increment reinvestment zones — and philanthropic donors made up some of the difference.
The latest research does not establish a causal relationship between park visits and mental health. In the Houston area, each greenspace visit was associated with a 0.113-percentage-point lower prevalence of poor mental health.
Sarayu Mouli, a research fellow at the Houston Methodist Academic Institute and co-author of the journal article, said the correlation between greenspace visits and mental health bolsters the case for investment in improving park access across Greater Houston.
“It’s extremely important to understand that nature is not a cure-all solution to our health,” Mouli said. “But it can support us with psychological restoration, physical health, stress, increase our physical activity and reduce loneliness.”
How Houston measures up
Historically, researchers have linked nature access to health effects by measuring people’s proximity to greenspaces, largely by using satellite data and imagery.
Researchers from the Houston Methodist Academic Institute and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland sought to advance understanding of the connection by using cellphone location data to measure actual visits to greenspaces by residents across 13,152 census tracts in the nine metro areas studied. Tourists and other visitors were excluded from the analysis.
The study also used 2023 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates of how many residents had poor mental health, defined as 14 or more days of frequent mental distress in a month.
After accounting for several variables — including amount of greenspaces, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, and transportation access — the researchers evaluated the strength of the association between greenspace visits and poor mental health in each metro area.
Houston repeatedly stood out in the data.
The region’s median number of greenspace visits, 11.5, was roughly one-third the number of visits by residents of Washington, D.C, which had the highest total. Houston ranked slightly behind Atlanta and solidly below Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles.
At the same time, Houston’s median rate of poor mental health, 18.7%, ranked highest among the nine regions. Washington, D.C.’s median rate of 12.9% was lowest.
The analysis ultimately found the link between greenspace visits and mental health was strongest in Houston, with the 0.113-percentage-point association roughly triple the amount across the nine metro areas.
“What’s really surprising is that some of the other cities, like Philadelphia, didn’t seem to have that much of a strong effect as we see in Houston,” Mouli said. “We would like to know more about why that is.”
In Houston and other cities, the associations were strongest in dense urban neighborhoods, particularly those with greater social vulnerability, and generally weaker in suburban and exurban areas.
Availability and access
While more greenspaces might improve residents’ mental health, Mouli cautioned that multiple factors influence whether people visit them.
Prior research suggests that proximity, transportation access, perceptions of safety and the quality of amenities play a role in whether people use greenspaces.
“It’s important to have nature in our city, but it’s even more important to measure who has access to it, who uses it and who has transportation to it,” Mouli said.
While local governments and philanthropists have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into parks in recent years, the city of Houston’s park system routinely scores relatively low on the Trust for Public Land’s annual rankings of the 100 largest U.S. cities. Houston checked in at 69th in 2026, with its score dragged down most by relatively meager investments in parks. The analysis does not evaluate the rest of Harris County or surrounding counties.
A 2023 Kinder Institute parks and greenspace survey of about 5,000 Harris County residents found strong demand for more local parks — and an appetite to make modest personal investments in them.
Nearly 4 in 5 residents said their neighborhood needed more parks and greenspace, with slightly more people of color and young adults citing the need.
About 70% said they would be willing to pay $2 per month to help improve parks and greenspaces in the area, while half said they would pay $5 per month. Support slipped to about 25% at the $10-per-month threshold.
