Urban Design

Modern Housing Estate
By permission of Meath County Council Pride of Place.

Urban design plays a fundamental role in the health and wellbeing of individuals. Healthy urban planning is crucial in creating and managing the built environment we live in. This means it influences our ability to maintain good health. It promotes the idea that a city is much more than buildings, streets and open spaces and is a living community, the health of which is inextricably linked to that of its citizens.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has identified 11 key health objectives for urban planning which include:

• Social cohesion
• Healthy lifestyles
• Housing quality
• Access to work
• Accessibility
• Local low input food production and distribution
• Safety
• Equity
• Aesthetics
• Air & Water Quality
• Quality of Land & Natural Resources & Climate Stability

Some of these issues and case studies of good urban design from a health and wellbeing persepctive are discussed in the subsections below.