This report compares and contrasts expert understandings of nature’s contributions to wellbeing in urban settings with the ways that everyday Americans think about nature, urban life and human wellbeing. Researchers document numerous aspects of nature’s broad benefits that remain invisible to public thinking. Public assumptions about cities as challenges to human wellbeing and nature as “natural,” not man-made, are explored. The result of this work is a strategic enumeration of the challenges facing those who wish to explain and improve urban access to nature.