The presentation slide above summarises the main points of my message to the A Place to Live conference in Wanganui, New Zealand. It is offered in response to Richard Louv's keynote address that we need to connect children with nature. 

I agree with him, but believe we need to look more widely. When we are looking at human restoration, when we are looking for our towns and cities to provide a life worth having, we need to consider salutogenic urban design. We need to ensure young and old, marginalised and engaged have equal access to nature connections in their daily lives. We need to ensure those same people can easily come together safely, and conveniently in a public space. Recently I was in Athens, presenting at the WHO"s Healthy Cities conference. Greece is broke. Its young people are unemployed in record numbers. I remarked on history and how Greece has risen and fallen several times since antiquity. The people are resilient and resourceful. They don't have a lot of public greenspace. They do have abundant, tiny, home-kitchen-sized neighbourhood cafes and pocket parks where people can come together to talk about their problems and celebrate their joy. They have strong cultural connections with each other.

If we are to create A Place to Live, if we are to create a Life Worth Having, we need to address planning issues. We need for tiny cafes to be a permissible activity within a residential neighbourhood. We need many more, attractive, accessible parks where we can feed the birds, watch the butterflies, and even help local authority's budgets and do some general maintenance.

I can hear you shrieking "WHAT?!" from here. :-) Maintain a public space?! Yes. There is overwhelming evidence that we need to interact with nature on a daily basis for our health and well-being. While it is beneficial to have a green view, it is even better for improving concentration, improving memory, reducing stress, relieving and preventing depression, reducing risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease if we can not only see, but touch, prune, weed and harvest produce from the land. 

The good news is it is not difficult and it is not expensive to put supports in place for our people, young and old. We need first to acknowledge there is a problem. Second we need to evaluate available resources. Do we have local expertise in this area? Are governance systems supportive of health and well-being? Do local policies in schools, care homes, parks and gardens allow for the nature and social connections to take place? If not, where can we go for guidance? 

The joy of my position is that I am able to join the dots, to link people and plants, to restore humans through environmental design. If you want to know more, get in touch. Contact us info @ greenstone design .co. nz

This week I'm travelling the length of NZ with the NZIA. I and 2 other urban designers - Steve Thorne and Dr Angelique Edmonds - are presenting the 2014 urban design speaker series.

It is interesting to see who comes along. The 3 presentations all come from different perspectives but each reach the same conclusion. Urban design for health and well being is more than just an interesting topic of research , more than a soon-to-be short-lived 'new fangled idea' . Urban design for health and well being offers architects, planners and policy makers an opportunity to contribute to the liveability ratings and functional wellness of a community.

It requires big thinking and a collaborative approach. If we take responsibility for our designs we acknowledge the impact environmental design can make. Community gardens, roof top gardens, parks and pocket green space combine with the built environment to affect mental health, stress and depression. These problems occur within education, social housing and the workplace, in fact wherever there are people who are stressed by their environment. In these situations salutogenic design interventions become cost effective, achievable goals.

We are getting the message out but more people need to join the conversation. We have both a challenge and an opportunity to fundamentally make a difference to the health and well being if our client communities. Care to join us?

Forest bathing or Shinrin-yoku refers to time spent walking in forests. In Japan the practice has been studied by forestry, agriculture and health officials. The rest of the world is now catching on to the idea that rather than being a nice-to-have feature, urban forests are vital to balance the health effects of modern life.

Walking in forests (shinrin-yoku) may prevent the onset of chronic illnesses like cancers, reduce blood pressure, heart rate and stress hormones (which may have a preventive effect on hypertension).  It is also credited with creating calming psychological effects through changes observed in parasympathetic and sympathetic nerves. 

Forest bathing appears to increase the level of serum adiponectin--a hormone that in lower concentrations is associated with obesity, type 2 DM (diabetes mellitus), cardiovascular disease, and metabolic syndrome, among other metabolic disorders. A combined study found shinrin-yoku reduces anxiety, depression, anger, fatigue and feelings of emotional confusion.

For the full study findings, click here

With so many billions being spent on new hospitals and community health care facilities being built around the world it is timely to pause and consider the best use of health funding. While we will always need a central place for treatment of the seriously ill it makes sense to take a salutogenic approach and prevent as much illness as we can. 

To do that we need to ensure our urban design promotes barrier free access and engagement with nature, promotes social cohesion, encourages healthy eating of locally grown fresh foods, mitigates climate change with long-lived tree planting, natural shade and solar orientation of buildings for passive heating and cooling and encourages an active lifestyle. Given that that is what Greenstone Design advocates and practices on a daily basis we are gearing up to manage the increasing demand for our very specialised service! 

Where people are already within the hospital system we can reduce their length of stay, their need for pain relief and overall recovery time with landscape led interventions. Environmental improvements offer a win : win situation for all.

In an education setting, it is important to offer outdoor learning environments. Landscape-led design interventions offer mental health benefits and promote a healthy active lifestyle.

Within a social housing setting we need to ensure public space offers a mix of playful communal and private space, natural shade and shelter, flowers and wildlife, with accessible fruit and vegetable growing.

There are growing numbers of people around the world interested in making a difference. They work within their local  communities, often as volunteers, to bring people together, to improve human health and well-being, and at the same time respect the environment on which we all depend. 

The TED talk by Pam Warhurst describes how she and a small group of friends created an urban food growing initiative in Todmorden, England. They worked with local farms to boost supply of goods to the town. They worked with local schools to bring agriculture into the classroom, and the classroom out into the local economy, onto the former wasteland to create urban agriculture.

On my study tour of Berlin last week I visited urban farms where people, young and old, and across all cultural groups can come together to grow fruit and vegetables and rear animals for food. In areas with the most social deprivation access to cheap fresh food has transformed local health outcomes. Interestingly, the stressed execs also profess to benefit from access to the urban food growing initiatives. While they may not work in the gardens they love visiting, and spend time regularly to check on the progress of young animals, new crops, and see how the people, their new friends, are getting on. 

The urban farm has brought people together in an unexpected way. Although initially devised as a project for the more vulnerable members of the community, in fact it has become a win:win situation for all. The reduced carbon footprint from local food growing helps mitigate climate change. Human health and well-being is intrinsically linked to the ecological health of our planet and our local environment. Biophilic cities offer a way to connect people to nature and living things in a way we have missed out on for 2-3 generations. We are hard-wired to respond to nature. We need to boost our green infrastructure as we build resilient communities. Long lived shade trees planted around the farm add to the green capital of the neighbourhood, reduce the urban heat island effect, help absorb and slow storm water runoff, while sequestering carbon and providing valuable central city habitat for a range of invertebrates and birds.

Last weekend I was fortunate to be invited to address the Rotary District Conference in Methven, New Zealand. I talked to the 300 + assembled members about design for health and well-being. The group was mixed in terms of age, sex and profession. Some were farmers, there were also business people, people in manufacturing  in tourism, doctors, architects, engineers, accountants, retailers and wholesalers. A really diverse group. What they share in common is a desire to serve their communities and make the world a better place. So it was natural that I offer some ideas for how they could collaborate with the people on the ground, engage their communities, and put their considerable talents and energy to good use.

Rotary International worked to eradicate polio. They work on programmes that affect the health and well-being of people in many different ways. Health and well-being through environmental, economic and social enhancement is central to the ethos of Greenstone Design. How we achieve that, on limited budgets and often in tight time frames requires us to get creative. When we're not creating sensory- rich gardens we like to create spaces for play.

Natural play is a wonderful thing. It takes very little by way of manufactured resources but requires us to allow a little mess and creativity. Central to enjoying a sense of well-being is being able to play, freely, to explore, to create, challenge ourselves, try out new things, test our confidence and make new friends in safe surroundings. There is a wonderful short video showcasing the collaborative design process.

I'm heading off to Moscow, Russia, next week to design a natural playground. We were fortunate to win the design competition with our concept for nature play, set within a massive manufactured space. I will post photos when I have some. The client is a large international school that caters for 3-19 year olds. Our design aims to improve the cognitive functioning of the children, counter any potential for depression by being an expressive space where children are encouraged to engage with nature on a daily basis. It also acknowledges our biophilia, our in-built love of living things. It's a fun project that allows me to play; at this stage with ideas, and in a few months, alongside the children in their new natural play space.

It doesn't seem almost 4 months since my last blog. Time has raced by as I get deeper into writing the book. This week I have been researching green (living) roofs alongside parks and gardens for their potential impact on human health and well-being.

Guess what? Research from all around the world supports the view that landscape in general, and gardens in particular, can have a marked positive impact on our mental and physical health. Depression and other mental health issues are most easily helped through regular activity and exercise outdoors. Our biophilia, or our innate love of living things, means that by reconnecting with nature we can inexpensively and cost-effectively manage health and well-being.

Children have a right to play and to live and develop to their full capacity, enshrined in the UN Rights of the Child Articles 6 and 31. With home gardens becoming smaller, and more people living in apartments with little or no outdoor space, it is important we provide opportunities for children and adults to access gardens. 

The photo shows a young boy pouring water from one container to another, sitting in a larger container. Beside him is a swing, hung from a tree, shaped like a horse. By bringing containers to a park, and having a water supply available, it is possible to recreate the experiences he would have had at home, if he lived in a property with its own garden. It comes down to how we design and develop our public spaces.

Given our need and right to access nature for health and well-being it is vital that we, as landscape and urban designers, provide those spaces in and around housing developments, wherever they may be. City parks can recreate the feeling of home gardens. It just takes a new way of looking at landscape.

"It's important that play environments are as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible," Dr. Sandseter says.

There is increasing press coverage of the benefits of risk in play. Last week there was an article in the Wall Street Journal. When we give our children opportunities to play outdoors, freely interacting with nature and the environment around them they develop an awareness of and a very healthy connection to that environment. Where and how we play as children shapes who we are as adults.

As our cities aim to intensify their urban form it is ever more important to remember to provide for the children who live in our communities. Many children in New Zealand and Australia are growing up in apartments designed for 'singles' or 'couples', not families. Children are mandated for in some countries as requiring 15sqm of outdoor play space, per child. There is no such requirement in Australasia, yet.

When we look at the numbers of children and their needs for risky, natural play we need to look closely at the availablity of urban open space. We need to look at how many urban forests or groves of trees and grassy or limed patches are there within our cities, within a 5 minute walk from home?

Providing abundant  'safe as necessary' play opportunities requires developers, city planners and designers to acknowledge the mental health impacts, the public health impacts of children's sensory development and their need for natural play.

While a collection of trees do not an urban forest make, they do make a wonderful home for birds and beneficial bugs and a setting for sitting out, playing in the shade, playing in, eating from. These trees were retained, and some new mature specimens added, when the social housing blocks were redeveloped by Wellington City Council.

These trees transform what would otherwise be a  fairly bleak, open space

Contrast the courtyard area above with this purpose-designed care home space and you can immediately see the difference trees make to a living environment. 

Trees take an institutional setting and make it 'home'. We have been brought in to transform this space and bring it to life, both to enhance the lives of residents, and the local environment. A real win:win. 

Tomorrow I'm meeting with Christchurch's city arborist. We're going to discuss the role the urban forest can play in the health & well being of a redeveloped Christchurch. In the UK GPs are already prescribing a 'green' treatment for early stage depression, whereby people are given a prescription not for expensive medication but for a walk in a forest for 20 minutes, 3 times a week.

Landscape architecture has an important role to play in the sustainable design of the city. Sensory gardens are those gardens that are designed to stimulate the senses, to do more than just look good, but to function on a human scale, providing food, shelter, habitat and employment. Urban forests can be the ultimate sensory garden, when planted with mixed natives, fruit and nut trees, and designed for year round interest, to attract native birds and invertebrates.

Urban trees represent an irreplaceable asset for cities, and unlike most municipal infrastructure a trees’ value will increase over its life span. In technical terms, an urban forest refers to the trees located within a city’s limits, whether planted or naturally occurring.

Check out the link to the Danish Architecture Centre's article on Edmonton's trees.