Designing for health and wellbeing

After the over indulgence of the festive period, the New Year is characteristically a time for turning over a new leaf. For many this includes a resolution to get fit, lose weight and be healthier. And with good reason: the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has found that 1 in 4 British people are classified as obese: the highest levels in Western Europe. Britain is the ‘fat man of Europe’ and locally, Tamworth in Staffordshire has been identified as Europe’s fattest town, with 31% of residents obese (NHS). An obesity epidemic is rapidly approaching which we must take steps to mitigate now, to avoid the associated threats of diabetes, cancer, disease and early death.

The NHS cites the cause of the rapid rise in obesity as our ‘modern lifestyles, including our reliance on the car, TVs, computers, desk-bound jobs and high-calorie food.’ Beyond the role that personal choice has to play, the Government Office for Science described a key factor in this problem as ‘obesogenic environments’ which encourage unhealthy eating and inactivity.

Thousands of books and indeed entire careers have been based around finding the motivation that people need to take personal responsibility for their lifestyles – I will instead look at a more tangible, physical way that dreams of a healthier future can become reality: through the critical role that the built environment can play in dealing with the two key issues: a lack of exercise and poor nutritional choices.

In today’s blog I am going to focus on what can be done to target lack of exercise.

Provide suitable space to exercise

Ensuring that a suitable area of land is available for accessible open space is critical. This should be a defining element of the initial planning phase of any development. But it is not simply enough to identify a space, the role of design is to define an engaging and stimulating environment that invites people to use it, through sensible and well thought out interventions that encourage people to venture outside and get active.

An inspirational example of this is the Jardines del Turia in Valencia, an 8km long park on the course of the former bed of the river Turia which cuts through the centre of the city. From morning until night, the park is full of people coming together outdoors to exercise. There are specific designed interventions such as pitches, playgrounds and outdoor gyms but for the most part, the park provides space for people to use as they wish, in a safe and pleasant environment.

One of my favourite examples for its imaginative variety and its inclusive design is Superkilen in Copenhagen, which the Node team was lucky enough to visit this year. This incredibly imaginative park provides a range of equipment and designed landscape which encourages people of all ages to play in a safe and overlooked space at the joining point of a number of Copenhagen’s communities. The influence that each community had on the space was evident, both through its varied design and through its usage by a hugely diverse range of people. Copenhagen is blessed with spaces like this, as BaNanna Park, a square turned outdoor climbing extravaganza is testament to. No wonder the Danes look so healthy…

Provide safe routes to walk, run and cycle

For some, despite their best intentions, healthy resolutions barely make it through January. This is often true if it involves using that new gym membership you treated yourself to. Finding time is cited as one of the key reasons for failure, so what about if you didn’t have to find time – but instead reallocate it? One of the best ways to ensure that resolutions make it past the end of January is to embed them within your existing routine.

Most people spend time commuting in some way. As a nation, we are walking less and driving more (NHS). As such, there is scope to identify ways that time spent commuting could incorporate walking, running and cycling. For many this could be just as easy, time efficient and a great deal cheaper than using the car or public transport, not to mention the huge potential benefits for health.

This is where the design of streets, cycleways and paths can be vital as a means of creating the type of environment that people want to walk, cycle and run along. Key movement routes should be well lit, overlooked, of a good quality consistent material and feel safe at all hours to encourage as diverse a range of people to use them.

As a cyclist, I believe that an entirely segregated route away from the road is always preferential, as typically found in cities like Copenhagen, Barcelona, Seville, Amsterdam which are synonymous with cycling. Where this is not possible, providing clearly defined cycle lanes within the carriageway is a must to give cyclists a degree of security and encourage people out onto their bikes.

Summary

Exercise is a positive cycle: the more you do, the more you want to do, but to begin the process, first we must create the conditions for it to take place. As such, it is incumbent on anyone involved in the design of the built environment to consider how their schemes provide varied and interesting outdoor space with opportunities for play for all ages, together with safe and convenient routes for walking, running and cycling.

Join me next month to investigate what design and the built environment can do to target poor nutritional choices.