Outdoor education is a teaching method which has several advantages to traditional classroom tuition. Its ideas have a long tradition and find support in the current Swedish curriculum. The place for the tuition is a central aspect within outdoor education. This essay aims to investigate what good places for outdoor education look like as well as discussing how the characteristics of such places can be used when designing schoolyards. Previous research shows that nature has characteristics that suit outdoor education well.

How can man´s place preferences be explained? What aspects influence our experience of place? This essay attempts to define a good place to be drawing from sources of environmental psychology as well as other landscape theories and relating these findings to the landscape architect?s field of work. Physical place properties, like physical elements and their juxtaposition in space are examined in relation to place preferences as well as psychological properties, such as place attachment and place identity due to cultural or social aspects.There are strong cross-cultural similarities in our place preferences but there are also some differences. Natural elements, like trees or water, are widely preferred over man-made ones, like buildings, roads or fences.Man seems to be sensitive for the balance between different place characteristics, like the balance between ?soft?, natural, elements and ?hard? man-made ones or the complexity versus the legibility of place.