Healthy urban development case studies

What do exemplar healthy urban developments look like? With the growing interest in ‘healthy’ buildings and places, we wanted to understand what could be considered best practice. This research involved a large review of published case studies, using professional organisations, newspaper reports, published academic research and other sources.

Our summary of each case study will be published incrementally in Spring 2022.

Are the projects ‘best practice’?

In publishing these projects, we are not endorsing them as ‘best practice’ or making any claims about whether they are good for health and wellbeing. We are hoping to learn about what the wider industry and professionals perceive ‘healthy’ development to look like.

Each case study was selected because it met our selection criteria:

1. Describes an urban development project that explicitly aimed to promote or safeguard human health and/or wellbeing (including the related term of liveability)
2. Urban development cases are recent, built after 2000
3. Substantive data are available
4. Data are available from sources that are not solely marketing material
5. Design measures or processes are described (related to health and wellbeing)

How were the projects analysed?

We extracted information about each project from multiple sources and entered this into a template. The template included general project details (project size, location, type of development, etc.) and information specifically related to health.

We used the THRIVES framework as a way to consider how health and wellbeing were supported in each project. In reporting each project we explain how it relates to THRIVES through three scales of health impact (planetary, ecosystem and local) and the core principles (inclusion, equity and sustainability).

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation, an urban health charity in London. The research team includes Helen Pineo, Gemma Moore, Karla Barrantes Chaves, Elizabeth Cooper, Vafa Dianati, Kay Forster and Isobel Braithwaite.