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Towards Healthy Urbanism: Inclusive, Equitable and Sustainable (THRIVES) – an Urban Design and Planning Framework from Theory to Praxis

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Towards Healthy Urbanism: Inclusive, Equitable and Sustainable (THRIVES) – an Urban Design and Planning Framework from Theory to Praxis Cities & Health ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcah20 Towards healthy urbanism: inclusive, equitable and sustainable (THRIVES) – an urban design and planning framework from theory to praxis Helen Pineo To cite this article: Helen Pineo (2020): Towards healthy urbanism: inclusive, equitable and sustainable (THRIVES) – an urban design and planning framework from theory to praxis, Cities & Health To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2020.1769527 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published online: 26 Jun 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcah20 CITIES & HEALTH https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2020.1769527 ORIGINAL SCHOLARSHIP Towards healthy urbanism: inclusive, equitable and sustainable (THRIVES) – an urban design and planning framework from theory to praxis Helen Pineo Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, University College London, London, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The globally distributed health impacts of environmental degradation and widening population Received 2 March 2020 inequalities require a fundamental shift in understandings of healthy urbanism – including Accepted 5 May 2020 policies and decisions that shape neighbourhood and building design. The built environment KEYWORDS tends to disadvantage or exclude women, children, the elderly, disabled, poor and other groups, Urban; health and wellbeing; starting from design and planning stages through to occupation, and this results in avoidable design; planning health impacts. Although these concepts are not new, they are rapidly emerging as built environment research and practice priorities without clear understanding of the interconnected aims of healthy environments that are sustainable, equitable and inclusive. This article promotes a new framework – Towards Healthy uRbanism: InclusiVe Equitable Sustainable (THRIVES) – that extends previous conceptualisations and reorients focus towards the existential threat of environmental breakdown and the social injustice created through inequitable and exclusive urban governance and design processes and outcomes. The Framework was developed through synthesising knowledge from research and practice, and by testing this new conceptualisation in a participatory workshop. Ongoing research is exploring implementation of the Framework in practice. If widely adopted, this Framework may contribute towards achieving the goals of sustainable development through a focus on increasing human health and wellbeing in urban development. Introduction wellbeing. Urban planners’ increased interest in health ff The agendas of international bodies such as the World and wellbeing (Pfei er and Cloutier 2016) is now met Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations with a receptive audience among some developers and (UN) have recently converged with property develop- landowners who see the potential for added value or ff ment and urban planning professionals over the topic market di erentiation (Chang 2018). Although eco- of healthy urbanism. This new healthy building and nomic viability remains a challenge for integrating planning agenda is evident in the proliferation of healthy design measures and construction materials guidance (e.g. World Green Building Council 2014, into many projects (Carmichael et al. 2019), the emer- 2016, Urban Land Institute 2015, UN-Habitat 2018, gence of new standards, such as WELL and Fitwel, Pineo and Rydin 2018, WHO 2018b). The achieve- indicates a new way for healthy development to be ment of both health and sustainability goals through assessed and valued (Pineo and Rydin 2018). The urban development has been advocated through the healthy building and planning agenda is thus shaped parallel activities of the WHO Healthy Cities and by many voices with diverse perspectives on how built sustainable building movements (Hancock and Duhl environment professionals should be part of health 1986, Reed et al. 2009, Rydin 2010, Hancock 2011), promotion and protection. This article introduces and historically these agendas have not intersected a new way of conceptualising healthy urbanism that substantively. However, the global trends of rapid responds to perceived gaps in the existing professional urbanisation, resource and biodiversity loss, climate knowledge base and guidance for urban development. change, widening inequalities, ageing populations and The author argues that the concept of healthy urban the rising burden of non-communicable diseases development needs to be reframed to encompass the (Gatzweiler et al. 2017) are part of the context that connected lenses of sustainability, equity and inclu- has brought these aligned, yet predominately separate, sion and the consideration of health impacts at multi- fields of research and practice together. The other part ple spatial and temporal dimensions. of this alignment relates to new perceptions among In the context of deregulation and increased reliance urban development professionals about health and on market-led development, both public and private CONTACT Helen Pineo [email protected] Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources, University College London, House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0NN, UK © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 2 H. PINEO sector actors need to have a shared understanding of the global health threat of the 21st century’,creatinghealth importance of healthy environments, yet this is not cur- impacts through ‘changing patterns of disease, water and rently the case. A Design Council (2018) survey of 601 food insecurity, vulnerable shelter and human settle- British planners and urban designers found that 82% of ments, extreme climatic events, and population growth respondents’ perceived differences between their own and migration’ (p. 1693). Rapid unplanned urbanisation view of healthy place-making and that of developers. is implicated in the rise of non-communicable and com- Respondents felt that market pressures and insufficient municable diseases (Alirol et al. 2011,WHO2014)and funding were significant barriers, but also that healthy increased risk of emerging infectious diseases (Neiderud development was not ‘seen as the “norm”’ (p. 7). The 2015), such as Covid-19. In addition, the built environ- survey highlighted a knowledge gap in how healthy place- ment affects health inequities, avoidable differences in making is conceptualised by professionals, who placed health caused by uneven distribution of resources, exem- greater priority on increasing physical activity than issues plified by the significant gaps in life expectancy across the such as homes for people from different backgrounds, least and most deprived in society (CSDH 2008). The compact mixed-use communities, indoor environments built environment contributes to health inequities and job creation. This survey reinforces previous inter- through a number of pathways including the concentra- national research findings (see Carmichael et al. 2012) tion of environmental burdens (air and noise pollution, that gaps in knowledge and conceptual understanding limited access to parks, and so on) in low socioeconomic are key challenges for integrating health into urban status neighbourhoods (Northridge and Freeman 2011, development. Gelormino et al. 2015). Finally, the design of urban Furthermore, not all built environment professionals environments can exclude certain groups in society, accept responsibility for safeguarding health and sustain- such as children or people with disabilities, in ways that ability, or improving inequalities, through building and affect their health and wellbeing (Heylighen et al. 2017). urban design. In his editorial in The Lancet,Richard A comprehensive model of interactions across sus- Horton (2012) described being defeated by a panel of tainable and healthy urban environment agendas architects who claimed ‘Architecture cannot cure the (including how these play out across spatial and tem- world’s ills . There is no moral duty on architects to poral scales) is lacking. Such a model is needed to com- incorporate cures into their work’ (p. 94). It is unclear how municate and align action across the disparate widespread these views were among built environment professions involved in the built environment sector. professionalsatthattime,butsomedisagreed(Pineo Schandl et al.(2012) noted a lack of conceptual 2012). Similarly, architects’ relatively late awakening to approaches that cover all relevant urban processes that the climate crisis has been criticised (Murray 2019). address human and ecosystem health. The emergence of There likely remain many built environment practitioners specific built environment and equity frameworks who do not consider health and sustainability objectives to (Northridge and Freeman 2011,Gelorminoet al. 2015) be part of their work (Pilkington et al. 2013,Marshet al. demonstrates progress, yet further underscores
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