Healthy placemaking: how our environments shape our wellbeing

Across the UK, local authorities are facing similar pressures, regardless of their size or level of wealth. These include ageing populations, stalled or declining healthy life expectancy, widening inequality, delayed access to home ownership, and a range of other challenges affecting daily life. At the same time, demand for health and social care is rising, public sector staff are leaving, and budget reductions are looming – making it increasingly difficult to respond to current community needs, let alone building resilience to future challenges.

In 2013/14, local authority budgets allocated around half of spending to children’s and adult social care (16% to children’s and 36% to adult social care). By 2023/24, this had risen to about two-thirds (with 22% to children’s care and 39% to adult social care). However, even this level of investment does not meet the actual demand, which continues to exceed available funding.

Given this context, the environments we create become more and more important. Any opportunity to support the health of our populations and prevent, reduce or delay reliance on clinical intervention and social care should be considered essential, and given exceptional weight in the planning balance.

Here are four key things to consider to create a healthy environment:

1. Support healthy, independent living for longer: Designing spaces that allow people to stay active can improve health outcomes. This includes extensive green space, active travel such as cycling, and access to nature – all of which are beneficial to both physical and mental wellbeing.
2. Create age and dementia-friendly environments: Design features can help improve quality of life, such as comprehensive way finding, which uses consistent signage and maps to guide people through spaces, boardwalks, amenities, and assisted living through design, creating accessible and adaptable homes.
3. Prioritise neurodiversity-friendly design: These spaces are beneficial to everyone and are extremely valuable to building both inclusivity, independence and mental health. Key features include: positive soundscapes and inclusive calming and sensory spaces.
4. Plan for adaptability and resilience: As climate and lifestyle patterns change, developments must be prepared to accommodate for wellbeing over a long period of time.

Schools, health hubs, community hubs and residential developments can all incorporate these features to improve adaptability and functionality. Incorporating healthy placemaking features should be a priority for every project. By doing so, we can create environments that meet today’s needs, reduce pressure on healthcare systems, and strengthen community wellbeing for decades to come.

Further information

Contact Andrew Buroni

Learn more about the benefits of healthy urban design here.