The links between urban design and physical and mental health are well established. So how do you take an evidence-based approach to health-promoting urban design and green spaces? Swedish landscape architects wanted to know how to translate existing evidence into design and looked to researchers to help.
Researchers and landscape architects collaborated on a project using participatory action research methods. Researchers used existing evaluation tools and two case studies to test the processes.
One case study used an existing park that was due for renewal. Citizens, politicians and planners were involved in collaborative activities. Design proposals were evaluated based on the feedback from the local stakeholders. This is how they discovered the most important design aspects to consider in the second part of the study.
Aspects such as safety, vegetation, water flow, and traffic management were considered in the design. Residents with homes and gardens next to the park were concerned that this would attract visitors from other areas. New users were apparently not welcome to “their” space.
The article explains the collaborative processes that involved the researchers, the landscape architects and other stakeholders. The Quality Evaluation Tool was used as the framework for the study. Some landscape architects found it took time to learn how to use the tool. Others found it wasn’t easy to use it either – they needed something simpler.
However, the tool was useful in knowing how to apply evidence and assist the design process itself. Overall, landscape architects said they had a better understanding of how their designs could promote health and wellbeing.
The title of the article is, Health-promoting urban planning: A case study of an evidence-based design process. There are reflections on participatory action research as part of the concluding comments.
Healthy View of Placemaking
An opinion piece on the Design Council website gives an overview of the study they did with Social Change UK. More than 600 built environment practitioners across the UK completed the survey. They found that healthy placemaking often sits outside mainstream housing, public health and placemaking policy.
The article explains the economic benefits of healthy placemaking. The Design Council defines healthy placemaking as, “tackling preventable disease by shaping the built environment so that healthy activities and experiences are integral to people’s everyday lives.” Neighbourhoods that enable include:
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- Physical activity: To increase walkability in buildings and neighbourhoods and encourage healthy modes of transport
- Healthy food: To improve access to healthier foods
- Social contact: To design well-connected housing and neighbourhoods that provide access to facilities and amenities to reduce social isolation and loneliness,
- Contact with nature: To provide access to the natural environment, including parks
- Pollution: Reducing exposure to air and noise pollution.
This all adds up to compact, mixed-use, walkable and wheelable neighbourhoods with leafy streets and great parks.
Measuring the benefits of universal design
Dr David Bonnett writes in an opinion piece for the Design Council, that health professionals need to step up to show the benefits (cost savings) of designing inclusively. Inclusive design contributes to our health and wellbeing, but these benefits are rarely measured.
In the UK new buildings, both public infrastructure and private homes, must incorporate basic access features. But older buildings are not under the same regulation. There are costs for refurbishing older buildings, but by now we should be calculating that cost more effectively.
The cost of improving these are borne by local authorities. Bonnet says, “Design professionals, highways engineers included, are open to influence, and access consultants and others can tell them what to do. But first, health professional must assist in devising a method for demonstrating the benefits of inclusive design in order to make the case. Concerns for health succeeded in a ban on smoking in public building almost overnight. Inclusive design – already fifty years in the making – has got some catching up to do.”
Building health and wellness
We need healthy architecture – that is, architecture that supports human health and wellness. Louis Rice claims that human illness is related to the design of the built environment. Key issues are discussed in a book chapter that covers social, mental and physical health and “restorative” design. He proposes a “healthy architecture map” based on materials, environments, agency and behaviours. The title of the chapter is A health map for architecture: The determinants of health and wellbeing in buildings. Abstract is below.
There is more useful information and research in the book including a chapter from Matthew Hutchinson, The Australian dream or a roof over my head. An ecological view of housing for an ageing Australian population.
The World Health Organization also links health and the built environment in the WHO Housing and Health Guidelines. It includes a chapter on accessible housing.
Health, Technology and Buildings: a review
Abstract: Research into health, particularly social and psychological health, is crucial. Ultimately, an in-depth understanding of social and psychological health will more than promote well-being.
Technology research is indispensable, particularly concerning health and the built environment, given the need to create holistic and supportive frameworks for well-being. Moreover, because literature reviews establish the foundation for academic inquiries, they provide valuable overviews for foresight into grey research areas, particularly multi-disciplinary research like health technology and the built environment.
Hence, this study aims to discover the existing themes on health, technology, and built-environment nexus subjects while revealing the grey areas and suggesting proactive areas for future research. The objectives drove this aim to:
1. investigate the implications of technology for the social and psychological dimensions of health;
2. uncover the likelihood of a nexus between health, technology, and the built environment; and
3. highlight new research perspectives for the concluding seven years of the SDGs (2024–2030).
The review results highlighted ten themes around which a nexus exists between health, technology, and the built environment; they also pointed out new research perspectives for the next seven years (up to 2023).
The title of the paper is, Health, Technology And Built Environment Nexus: A Systematic Literature Review .