There’s a lot of guidance about designing healthy communities from public health and built environment professionals. For a change, I found it interesting to hear what Lord Richard Best called his ‘Top 10 Tips’ for designing healthy communities. Lord Best is ‘not a fan of major UK housebuilders’ because he feels their level of quality is not up to muster. So his example healthy development, Derwenthorpe, is led by the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, not a private developer.
Lord Best has an informed position on designing and planning healthy communities based on his roles as Vice President of the Local Government Association and the Town & Country Planning Association, and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People. He was also the CEO of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (1988-2006).
Derwenthorpe is a new development of 489 ‘attractive, affordable, eco-friendly family homes in a digitally inclusive, mixed-tenure community’.1 It’s situated on the edge of an existing village, Osbaldwick, outside of York. Here’s what Lord Richard Best thinks makes this development healthy – couched as his ‘Top 10 Tips’:
Top 10 tips for healthy places (not in any order):
- Affordable housing – 40% are rented on secure tenancies
- Lifetime Homes Specification (fully accessible – good for all ages and conditions)
- Walkable for children – safe footpaths to school
- A ‘Sustrans’ accessible barrier-free track to the centre of York
- Residents get a free bus pass for a year or a loan to buy a bicycle
- Home zones (shared street space) where pedestrians have the right of way
- Substantial play spaces for children
- Sustainable Drainage Systems to avoid flooding (and water ingress into homes)
- Electric vehicle charging points on each home, one car parking spot per house and a car club
- Affordable heating and power – they have a Combined Heating and Power (CHP) system providing low cost energy for residents.
There are more details on the Joseph Rowntree website (below) with other features of this development that contribute to its sustainability and health credentials.
1Derwenthorpe on the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust website: https://www.jrht.org.uk/community/derwenthorpe-york