Pineo, H; (2016) The Value of Healthy Places - for Developers, Occupants and Society. Town and Country Planning , 85 (11) pp. 477-480.

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Abstract

Does it cost extra to build a healthy place? Gauging by responses from debates at industry conferences, the implied answer is yes. But delve into the detail of economic analyses by various public and private sector organisations and a different picture emerges. Building healthy places – with walkable streets, safe homes, access to healthy food, and publicly accessible amenities – should not be seen as an additional line on a development’s cost sheet. Many healthy design measures are features of good design which not only benefit people’s health and wellbeing, but also create better places with higher commercial value and lower environmental impact. In the literature, planners are simultaneously blamed for the rise of chronic diseases by facilitating sedentary lifestyles through urban sprawl and hailed as keepers of the solutions to this problem.1 In practice, growth patterns are not the simple result of land use policy. A complex set of economic, environmental and social forces determine how and where new development occurs, within the constraints of a highly political system. It is the role of planners and design teams to integrate health into all aspects of policy and design at all scales. In doing so, they will ensure that healthy communities are not seen as a ‘nice to have’ element (and thus compromised when other competing factors such as affordable housing and climate change mitigation are calculated), but rather a normal part of good design and sustainable development.

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