WELLNESS CITIES
ACTIVE DESIGN
Jacqueline Bennett looks at whether, by adopting a new approach to design and city planning, we can make our cities – and their populations – well again
E
ven Mick Cornett, the enterprising mayor of Oklahoma in the US, couldn’t have envisaged the huge
impact his ‘We’re going to lose a million pounds’ campaign would have on the city when he launched the initiative in 2008 (
www.thiscityisgoingonadiet.com). After 18 months – with support from
local restaurants providing healthier options, and sports facilities offering special discounts – the city’s residents had collectively lost half a million pounds in weight. But it was only after citizens agreed a seven-year, one cent increase in sales tax to fund new bike lanes, sidewalks, hiking trails, ice rinks, green spaces and wellness centres that the city fi nally reached its target in 2011. Oklahoma reputedly now has the
highest employment rate among adults of any city in the US, and fi rms are keen to invest and relocate there because the workforce is so much fi tter than in other cities. Not only has the city become healthier, but it has become wealthier too.
Evidence and policy Much is now being written about active design – designing, constructing and managing our environment in such a way as to encourage people to be active (see
HCM March 14, p5). It’s an exciting idea and one that has had a long genesis in town planning in the UK. The National Planning Policy
Framework (NPPF) demonstrates how the planning system can play an important role in promoting healthy communities, leading to reductions in health inequalities, better access to healthy food, reduced obesity, more physical activity, better mental health and wellbeing, and improved air quality. Meanwhile recent major reforms to
planning and to health and social care – notably the National Planning Policy Framework 2012, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (which created local Health and Wellbeing Boards) and the Localism Act 2011, which ushered in neighbourhood planning – now present many opportunities for joined-up thinking to improve people’s health. These opportunities have been
highlighted by, among others, the Town and Country Planning Association through its recent project Reuniting Health with Planning: Healthier Homes, Healthier Communities. This report offers an overview of how local authorities can improve health and reduce health inequalities by bringing together related disciplines such
City planners are now looking at active design as one way to improve health
as housing, transport planning and regeneration. It includes a section designed to help local authorities and their partners identify links between public health objectives and how places can be shaped to respond to them. Alongside growing statutory
endorsement of the benefi ts of better town and city planning for improving health, fi tness and quality of life, a raft of other documents and initiatives have emerged. In 2003, CABE Space – a specialist unit of CABE – was set up to champion the importance of urban public space, particularly parks and green spaces, in improving quality of life. Meanwhile, in what has turned out to
be a prescient document, Sport England published Active Design: Promoting opportunities for sport and physical activity through good design in the mid-2000s, integrating agendas around design, health and transport and setting out many examples encapsulating the three design objectives of improving accessibility, enhancing amenity and increasing awareness. And in its City Health Check –
Areas of the UK’s cities with the
poorest health outcomes are those that have the least green space
52 Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
published in 2012 and analysing health problems correlated to the amount of green and public space available in London and England’s eight ‘core cities’ – the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) found that the areas of the UK’s cities with the poorest health outcomes are those that have the least green space. Moreover it’s the quality of streets and parks, as much as the quantity, that encourages people to walk more. Then there’s the Design Council in
the UK, which is currently championing its own Active by Design campaign –
August 2014 © Cybertrek 2014
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