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Vila Viva

After intervention. Image: URBEL

Vila Viva is a large-scale urban renewal programme across 12 informal settlements in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Using participatory governance models, the city has delivered vast urban renewal initiatives, land regularisation and community development activities that have benefitted residents’ health in numerous ways. Evaluations of the programme demonstrate success through multiple indicators, including reduced homicides and improved connectivity to infrastructure and community services.

This project is featured as one of our healthy urban development case studies and this case is adapted from the full version in Healthy Urbanism.(1)

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Park 20|20

Park 20|20. Image: Delta Development 4

Park 20|20 is the first Cradle-to-Cradle ® (C2C) urban development project in the Netherlands, trailblazing design approaches that minimise resource consumption and support human health. The C2C approach is manifest in Park 20|20 through circular design, material health, and design for disassembly. The site includes an office tower, high density offices, hotel tower, athletic facilities, childcare facilities, greenhouses, and 9 hectares of public open space. The design is intended to create a closed-loop system where waste, energy and water are modelled after natural ecosystems.

As the first full-service C2C office park in the world, the development has pioneered business and legal models to support the transition from linear to circular economies. Known as a circular economy business model (CEBM), this approach seeks to ‘reduce resource use and waste within production, but also to extend product life cycles and employ strategies that allow the consumer to do more than buy, use and dispose.’(1) The project has also demonstrated the financial value of sustainable and healthy building design.

This project is featured as one of our healthy urban development case studies and this case study was written by Elizabeth Cooper and Helen Pineo.

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Grow Community

Shared spaces encourage social interaction at Grow Community. Image: Helen Pineo, 2019.

Grow Community is a planned residential community of 142 homes on an 8-acre site on Bainbridge Island in Washington State, USA. The investors pushed for high sustainability credentials and a range of affordable property types. This push, alongside early engagement with local residents, led the project team to design the development using the One Planet Living Framework, a guide to reduce the community’s ecological footprint and facilitate health and happiness. The masterplan outlined a compact community with shared gardens and greenspaces, energy efficient buildings, and reduced water use. In addition to housing, the development includes a community centre, early childhood centre, and approximately 2 acres of open space and community gardens.

This project is featured as one of our healthy urban development case studies and this case study was written by Elizabeth Cooper and Helen Pineo.

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Nightingale Housing

Nightingale Anstey. Image: Kate Longley, Nightingale Housing

Nightingale 1 is a ‘social experiment’. The apartment building in an inner-city suburb of Melbourne is the first completed example of the replicable, triple bottom line housing typology of Nightingale Housing. The building proved the concept for the Nightingale model, which aims to develop housing projects that are financially, socially and environmentally sustainable, disrupting the status quo of Australian residential development.(1)

The core mission of Nightingale Housing social enterprise is to create a housing system that supports human wellbeing, as well as economic, social and ecological sustainability. These aspirations are materialised in the housing typology and development model exemplified in the Nightingale 1 building, now being replicated on other projects in Melbourne and elsewhere in Australia. This case study describes details about Nightingale 1 and the wider model that is being used on other Nightingale Housing projects.

This project is featured as one of our healthy urban development case studies and this case is adapted from the full version in Healthy Urbanism.(2)

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Stone34

Outdoor eating at Brooks Sports Headquarters Building (Stone34). Image credit: LMN Architects

Stone34 is a five-storey, mixed-use commercial building in Seattle, USA on Stone Way between 34th and 35th streets in the Fremont neighbourhood. The building was designed according to the City of Seattle’s Deep Green Program (now Living Building Pilot Program) which is aligned with the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). Stone34 is certified LEED Platinum. The building uses around 75 percent less energy and water than similar projects. It was envisaged to act as an urban “trailhead” to Seattle’s popular Burke-Gilman, a 43 km cycling and walking trail. The project’s goals to support both physical activity and sustainability across the building and site were further strengthened when the main tenant, Brooks Sports, a company that makes running shoes and attire, was secured.

This project is featured as one of our healthy urban development case studies and this case study was written by Elizabeth Cooper.

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Folkets Park

New playground at Folkets Park. Image: Kenneth A. Balfelt.

Nørrebro, one of the most densely populated, diverse, and disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Copenhagen, is home to Folkets Park (literally, “People’s Park”). It is a small urban park with a rich history as a place associated with local grassroots activism.

Residents created the park in 1971 on the site of a burned down building as a place for children to play. The adjacent Folkets Hus community centre was the site of local activism between the 1960s and 1980s, largely focused on disagreement over urban renewal. In the decades following there was not much municipal intervention in the park, but this shifted after a violent crime in 2012 that spurred the need for a re-design process focused on safety and inclusion.

The 2013 renovation of Folkets Park aimed to create a public space where all users could feel safe and comfortable. Perceived safety and the provision of public greenspace were the main determinants of health for this project. Another key aspect of this project was the aspiration to embed an inclusive and collaborative approach throughout the design process. As explained in guidance by the Gehl Institute, this exemplary project demonstrates how “when designing healthy places, inclusion can be a goal, a process, and a result”.(1)

This project is featured as one of our healthy urban development case studies and this case study was written by Elizabeth Cooper.

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UniverCity Childcare Centre

Playground at UniverCity Childcare. Image: Martin Tessler

The UniverCity Childcare Centre at Simon Fraser University (SFU) was the first childcare centre in the world to obtain the Living Building Challenge (LBC) standard. It was an early adopter of the LBC standard, which originated in British Columbia. The Centre is linked to the SFU Faculty of Education for research on the provision of innovative childcare. After the building was completed and in operation, university researchers engaged with staff at the Childcare Centre in a community of practice model to study and inform the use of the building itself as part of the children’s ‘play-based holistic learning’ about sustainability.(1)

The design process was informed by sustainable building practices and the Childcare Centre’s adoption of the Reggio Emilia pedagogical three ‘teachers’ model whereby educators are considered to be the more than teaching staff, but also the environment in which the children learn and the community in which they live. Inclusive design processes helped the project team understand how children and staff wanted to use the space to support education and development.

This project is featured as one of our healthy urban development case studies.

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