Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide, Volume II, Wellbeing and the Environment

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Summary

Wellbeing and the Environmental Implications for Design

Rachel Cooper

Lancaster University, U.K.

Elizabeth Burton

Lancaster University, U.K.

Gilbert and Galea (Chapter 2 in this volume) start this volume by outlining the complex interactions between socioeconomic factors that affect our environment and thus our wellbeing. The obvious relationship is cyclical: poor-quality environments contribute to poor mental and physical health; poor mental and physical health harms socioeconomic circumstances and leads to decaying, poor-quality environments. Unless we design ways out of this, “addressing the comprehensive set of features of the environment” that affect health, we will never be able to fully optimize the health of our populations over their life course. This chapter attempts to bring together some of the evidence related to wellbeing and the environment into a set of insights for design decision making. There are of course complementary and also competing recommendations that leave design decision makers with the responsibility to consider carefully how they make choices that will have an impact negative or positive on the individual, the community, and the environment.

Neighborhoods

Jane Jacobs' principles (discussed in Chapter 5) still hold; that is, safe streets, eyes on the street, mixed uses and connectivity, short blocks, and density: preserving historic neighborhoods. However, as Evans (Chapter 6) points out, Jacobs failed to recognize the wider context of post-war ...