What is a Healthy Sustainable Built Environment? Developing Evidence-Based Healthy Built Environment Indicators for Policy-Makers and Practitioners

Abstract

Healthy built environments place people and communities at the heart of urban planning, encouraging decision-making based on human health, well-being and environmental sustainability. This paper describes the development of a set of indicators to assist in this endeavour—by translating and linking the research evidence base with policy-makers and other practitioners. The paper describes how the indicators were chosen, contextualized and subsequently structured to maximize useability for urban planners and health professionals working together to improve community health and neighbourhood sustainability.

Keywords:

• Healthy built environments
• indicators
• research evidence
• healthy communities
• sustainability

Acknowledgements

This work was initiated by the Healthy Built Environments Program (HBEP) at the City Futures Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia and was partly funded by the NSW State Ministry of Health. The authors acknowledge the preparatory work undertaken by Drs. Jennifer Kent and Vivian Romero. Reviews of the Indicators by the HBEP Advisory Board, particularly the Chair, Professor Peter Sainsbury, are also gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. Refer: https://www.be.unsw.edu.au/city-futures/city-wellbeing/about.

2. Refer: http://www.be.unsw.edu.au/healthy-built-environments-program/projects/planning-and-building-healthy-communities.

3. An interesting convergence between ‘indicators’ and ‘Patterns’ is the specific pattern on indicators included within the Liberating Voices pattern language about communication systems prepared by the Seattle-based Public Sphere Project (refer www.publicsphereproject.org/node/228).

4. On the potential for indicators to empower communities, see as an example the work of Community Indicators Victoria (and their description of community indicators as, variously, a ‘democratic’, ‘policy’ and ‘reporting’ resource): www.communityindicators.net.au.

5. This project is by the Australian Bureau of Census and Statistics (see the Australian Community Indicators Network: http://nss.gov.au/nss/home.nsf/NSS/59B931F60915A7F1CA2577E6001D3A32?opendocument). It draws on substantial initial work by Community Indicators Victoria (www.communityindicators.net.au).

6. Refer: http://www.heartfoundation.org.au/SiteCollectionDocuments/HFW-Walkability-Checklist.pdf and www.walkscore.com.

7. Refer: http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/community_issues/crime_prevention/safer_by_design.

8. A summary of liveability projects generally is given in Lowe et al., (2013) when describing work to produce a set of indicators for Melbourne. Community Indicators Victoria give an extensive list of projects world-wide. Refer: www.communityindicators.net.au/useful_links.