Here's to your Health! - The Built Environment and Public Health

Katharine Logan, writing for GreenSource, has an article exploring the links between the built environment and public health:

The leading killers of our time are chronic ailments: heart disease, strokes, cancers, and diabetes. They share common risk factors: obesity, physical inactivity, poor diet, and smoking. New collaborations between the health and place-making professions are confirming that most of these conditions, as well as others, respond to a common factor: the built environment.

A sedentary lifestyle has been linked with chronic diseases for quite some time. It seems an obvious conclusion that a built environment that promotes a sedentary lifestyle would be linked with chronic diseases as well. But it’s not just the sedentary lifestyle - access to daylight, views, and green amenities is also important. This is an ingredient that has been dubbed “Vitamin G”:

In a 2006 study, Peter Groenewegen and colleagues correlated health data from across the Netherlands with access to green space, including household and community gardens, neighborhood parks, and larger natural areas. Their results indicate that people with access to nature are physically and mentally healthier than those without.

The mechanism by which Vitamin G boosts health is still under investigation. It could be the exercise, of course. It could also be the social interactions that result from getting out, walking, or gardening: Ongoing research into social capital and health by Ichiro Kawachi of Harvard University’s department of society, human development, and health finds an association between people’s health and their perceptions of the trustworthiness of other people in their community. Or it could be an effect of the view itself: A 2001 study by Frances Kuo at the University of Illinois found that, of 145 residents of a Chicago public housing project, those with a view of trees were better able to cope with life’s demands than those with a barren view.

I have long held the view that good urban design is a concern of public health. I am glad to see the two linked and I hope to see more of that in the future. It seems obvious to me that the way a community is organized and the form of its public spaces would have an immense impact on public health. Creating environments for people to thrive includes a focus on physical and mental health.

The article included several examples of projects that illustrate the changing attitudes within the design and development industry towards creating healthier places. Unfortunately, these example projects all take a sort of futurist approach. One of the primary issues of focusing on creating a “green” project is that these “green” strategies become drivers of the form and aesthetics. The result is a sort of techie-green futuristic look that doesn’t really reflect the humanity of a place. The problem of a sedentary lifestyle is a relatively recent issue (within the last 100 years). Perhaps there could be something gained from looking to the past as well as the future. For me personally, I didn’t resonate with the architecture shown in the article. I think there is an additional overlay in this discussion that looks at the quality of the architecture and the quality of the place in creating an environment for thriving. I would prefer a more human focused, human scaled design that also takes into account the sustainability and public health goals of the project.