Remember the special place in nature that you had as a child–that wooded lot at the end of the cul de sac, that ravine behind your housing tract? What if adults had cared just as much about that special place as you did, when you were a child?

In the spirit of the Do it Yourself, Do it Now philosophy of the Children & Nature Network, here’s an idea whose time may be coming: the creation of “nearby-nature trusts.” Land trust organizations could develop and distribute tool kits, and perhaps offer consulting services, to show how neighborhood residents could band together to protect those small green parcels of nearby nature. What might these little parcels be called? How about “button parks?”

More about my suggested term later, but first let me tell you about the Carolina Thread Trail.

A few weeks ago, I was in Charlotte, N.C., speaking to a gathering arranged by the Catawba Lands Conservancy, a regional land trust which has protected 7,500 acres. Catawba is also the lead agency for the Carolina Thread Trail, a regional trail network that will eventually weave throughout a huge area of North Carolina and South Carolina, reaching into 15 counties and serving over 2 million people.

The Catawba organization describes the Thread Trail this way: “Simply put, it will link people and places. It will link cities, towns, and attractions. More than a hiking trail, more than a bike path, the Carolina Thread Trail will preserve our natural areas and will be a place for exploration of nature, culture, science and history, for family adventures and celebrations of friendship. It will be for young and old, athlete and average. This is a landmark project. A legacy that will give so much, to so many, for so long.”

The Thread Trail is one example of how regions can address what will be, in an urbanizing world, a growing hunger for the health and well-being that nature provides to human beings. In fact, the availability of nearby nature is or should seen as an integral element of our future health care system, for reasons related to both physical and mental health.

When the Trust for Public Land (TPL), working with the Colorado Health Foundation, brought together groups concerned about the disconnect of children from nature, TPL leaders and I brainstormed on the future of land trusts in tough economic times. Considering this approach, a TPL leader suggested that neighborhood leaders might also identify abandoned houses, buy them, raze them, and turn them into natural parkland or community gardens. “We really do have to think about creating nature, not just preserving it,” he said.

As with family nature clubs, the central organizing principle of nearby-nature trusts would be: do it yourself, do it now–with a little help and information from friends who know about land trusts.

A larger pattern could emerge: As neighborhoods work to preserve or create parcels of nearby nature, they could symbolically join these special places to similar ones throughout a city; such an effort could be a new way to build parkland across an urban region–a kind of decentral park.

But let me return to this notion of what I call “button parks.” Why call them that? “Pocket park” is the term for small parks created by governments or developers; button parks–well, people can sew those on themselves.

The term makes particular sense in the Carolinas. The reason that the Carolina Thread Trail is called a thread trail is not only because of the image that word evokes, but because of the Carolinas’ long dependence on the textile industries. In past decades, stitching shirts has given way to circuit chips, but the sense of history remains. Development pressure has brought the need for regional planning, so that the nature connection can continue, especially for children and families in urban and suburbanizing areas.

So, while visiting with the good folks of Catawba, it occurred to me that the Carolina Thread Trail could be strengthened over time, politically and socially, if the people who live adjacent to the trail were to become more directly involved, not only in the use of the trail, but in the concept’s expansion deeper into their own neighborhoods.

What if people had access to free tool kits which helped people create their own “button parks” connected to the “thread” trail? These button parks wouldn’t need to be literally connected to the trail, but would serve as small extensions of the trail throughout the region.

Barriers would exist, among them the fear of liability. But precedents do exist around the country, and last week, when I was speaking in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the director of ACRES Land Trust suggested one approach. ACRES has protected natural habitats throughout northeast Indiana, southern Michigan and northwest Ohio. Jason Kissel, the executive director, suggested that button parks could be created by neighborhood associations, and that, at least in Indiana, public use of private land left in its natural state poses less danger of future litigation than land that has been “improved.”

By going through the process of creating button parks, people would learn about the growing importance of the land trust movement. Potentially, figuring this out could dramatically increase the amount of protected nearby nature. The residents of neighborhoods would be able to take pride in their protection of those little special places, places too small for government or large conservancies to protect, but large in the hearts of children and their families.

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Last month CBS’ “The Early Show” recognized the danger of what we’re now informally calling “nature-deficit disorder.” The show featured the 25 best cities in America for raising kids so they live healthy young lives that are connected to–not cut off–from the natural world. As coiner of the “nature deficit disorder” phrase (an informal, not medical term), I couldn’t have been more pleased. But more important, the media recognition underscores how critically important it is to help kids connect to nature, designing our communities to make it more possible.

The top three cities were announced by Backpacker magazine editor-in-chief Jonathan Don. Selected by his editors, they were Boulder, Colo., Jackson, Wyo., and Durango, Colo. Boulder was the magazine’s first choice, Dorn said, because it not only offers easy access to wilderness, but also to hundreds of miles of networked bike and running trails. After snowstorms, the city plows its bike paths before plowing the roads. It should be noted that most of the top cities on this list are destination locations–small, scenic, and relatively wealthy.

What about the rest of us, who aren’t able or willing to relocate?

Through urban design and family decisions, it’s time to make sure every child in America has access to “nearby nature” –by that I mean urban or state parks, regional nature preserves, clean urban streams, or the little woods just beyond the cul de sac.

One way to achieve that objective is to recognize the value of nearby nature. As Outside magazine puts it, “near is the new far.”

In March Illinois’ new governor, Pat Quinn–referencing nature-deficit disorder and the importance of nearby nature to families during a recession–reopened seven state parks closed by his predecessor. He cited the economic importance of urban parks.

It’s also time to start creating more nature, nearby.

Dream on, some pessimists will say. According to their vision of the future, rising energy prices will stimulate green flight, to more energy-efficient, self-contained exurbs. Paradoxically, green flight could drive us deeper into our electronic cocoons–or, at best, our back yards.

Last year, during the height of the oil crisis, Newsweek projected that “life at $200 a barrel” could radically reduce our activities in natural surroundings. Michael Lynch, of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, estimated the effects of rising fuel costs on our lifestyles would produce a 53 percent increase in gasoline prices, boost sales of yard toys by 18 percent and backyard pool supplies by 15 percent. A spike in gas prices, he added, could also enhance another close-to-home form of entertainment–leading to a rise of 1.2 percent in pregnancies. Newsweek opined: “If he’s right, stock up on videogames.”

That’s it? That’s the best we can do? The missing motivation here is health, which, over the long haul, will trump the pump.

Growth of the original suburbs offered the illusion of healthy country living; it was stimulated by green flight as well as white flight. Even before that, late 19th and early 20th century planners believed that cities could and should be places rich with nature. That philosophy inspired the urban parks movement. The industrialists who pushed for the creation of New York’s Central Park weren’t concerned with gas prices. Their priority was worker productivity, linked to the health benefits of nearby nature.

Unfortunately, planners and consumers lost touch with that philosophy. Now we have denatured urban and suburban neighborhoods.

In Last Child in the Woods, I described the growing body of scientific evidence indicating that the rise in attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder and an assortment of other childhood maladies might have something to do with children’s nature deficiency.

Recent studies have also suggested a connection between the decline in outdoor activities and the dramatic rise in childhood Vitamin D deficiency and myopia. In October 2008, Science Daily reported “the first study to look at the effect of neighborhood greenness on inner city children’s weight over time.” Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of Washington reported an association between higher neighborhood greenness and slower increases in children’s body mass over a two-year period, regardless of residential density. In other words, urban design can provide a greener, healthier environment, even in the densest of neighborhoods.

So it’s time to create nature and health where we and our families live, work and play. We can do it by expanding urban parks, by creating new woodlands and other natural spaces out of land reclaimed from industrial pollution and decaying shopping centers. New and redeveloped neighborhoods should incorporate natural play spaces, green roofs, community gardens, vertical farms, food-producing office buildings, and recycled rainwater streams.

When it comes to the health-giving properties of the natural world, near is the new far.

Note: Parents who wish to find nearby nature can go to NatureRocks.org for an online ZIP code-oriented directory to nature near to home, and a planning guide to create family nature “staycations.”

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President-elect Barack Obama is reportedly considering a new American relationship with Cuba. That’s long-overdue good news. But the new administration should consider this cautionary note: “An invasion of one Madonna is equal to ten Marine divisions,” according to Miguel Coyula, a noted city planner in Havana.

When Coyula made this observation in 2001, he didn’t think that either brand of invasion–cultural or military–was a good idea. At the time, Coyula, concerned about the future of Havana’s unique architectural heritage, was speaking to members of the Citistates Group, a collection of U.S. city planners, professors, and journalists looking into Havana’s architecture and urban planning. The visit took place before the Bush administration severely limited the ability of delegations of American professionals to visit Cuba.

That day, Coyula, one of the first of many officials and private citizens that we interviewed, led us on a tour of his kingdom, the vast “Maqueta de la Habana,” a warehouse-sized scale model of every building, street and tree in Cuba’s largest city. The low-tech but impressive planning tool was made of scraps of recycled cigar boxes. The miniature buildings were color-coded–dark brown for the Spanish colonial period, yellow for the 1900-1958 period, and white for those few buildings built since the revolution.

Havana’s beauty and spirit, even in miniature, can move a visitor to tears–as Neal Peirce wrote in his column shortly thereafter. Since 1987, Peirce and Curtis Johnson have written major reports for newspapers in 25 U.S. metropolitan regions. But they’d never seen a city quite like Havana, which Peirce called “one of the urban treasures of the planet.” Peirce’s column endorsed the idea of the United Nations declaring an “international architectural emergency” to save the city’s 500 years of architecture, including the globe’s largest collection of Spanish colonial-period buildings. All is in peril from heat, salt, humidity, hurricanes and Cuba’s poverty–and with melting of barriers, a potential invasion of Big Box Stores.

“As you can see, Havana is a time capsule,” Coyula told us. Many Americans know about the classic U.S. automobiles that were frozen in place in 1958, the year of the revolution. Havana’s streets are still full of ancient Chevrolets and Oldsmobiles, though their innards often incorporate transplanted parts from Russian Ladas. (In a typical Cuban bow to practicality, old missile heads are planted as traffic barriers.) The architecture, protected from the worst impulses of modern urbanization by communist indifference and the trade embargo, is less known.

“In 1959, I don’t think urban planners had any ideas about preservation,” said Isabel Rogol, a Cuban professor of public affairs, who has worked to preserve the old city. “There had been a master plan for the city in the 1950s, done by famous architects based in the U.S., which would have destroyed and replaced these old buildings.”

New Urbanist architect Andres Duany (a native Cuban who’s lived for decades in Miami) has argued that Havana’s urban quality exceeds any Latin American city, indeed all U.S. cities south of Washington. Duany means Havana’s preserved design, not the decay, which grows worse every year. Centuries old buildings crumble. Roofs cave in and balconies fall, sometimes killing Cuban families.

Ironically, those Americans who rail against the evils of government regulation might enjoy this nation, where sewage flows directly into the bay, where joggers are unsafe at any speed because government spends few public funds on filling sidewalk potholes; where home improvement projects are unrestricted by regulation. The U.S. urban experts visited one typical home where a family had built a cinder-block wall on a balcony of rotting wood overhanging their living room — which happened to have no ceiling.

Lifting the embargo, if that happens soon, could bring needed capital for the repair and preservation of the best of Havana’s architecture. Or it could destroy it. Coyula’s suggested to us the embargo be lifted gradually. Surprisingly, his opinion was shared by many Cubans we met, although they had suffered under communism and the embargo.

The Obama administration will soon debate the future relationship between Cuba and the U.S. One topic of discussion should be the obligation that U.S. government and businesses have to help Cuba achieve an orderly and respectful transition to a free market economy.

Here are some ideas for a liberalized but better Cuba, suggested by Peirce and other members of the Citistates Group: Place an emphasis on local job creation and give contract breaks to homegrown entrepreneurs. Foster a tourist economy that benefits small and neighborhood-based enterprises, not just foreign-held mega-hotels and resorts. Nurture locally-owned stores ahead of foreign-owned chains. Create modest-scale retirement housing for foreigners instead of the massive, walled-off communities that now ring many American cities. Require that developers invest in the restoration of historically significant buildings.

The three C’s of Cuba’s past and possible next chapter–colonialism, communism and commercialism–need not define its future.

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