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

In 2012 Greenstone Design was newly launched in New Zealand. Founder, Gayle Souter-Brown, had a dream to build a team of passionate people to serve the needs of communities across Australasia. She had started with Greenstone Design UK and was keen to use her experience of UK, Europe, and Africa at home. First though, she needed to get the message out that we need to re-evaluate the landscape component in our development schemes. New housing, affordable housing, schools, hospitals and care homes have been designed and built with low cost amenity strips that do little to lift mood, alleviate social isolation, raise aspiration. Some people would say there was no money to do anything else. How could a garden, a patch of grass or a tree do anything other than look pretty, let alone boost health and well-being? Gayle Souter-Brown would say "you don't need a bigger budget, you just need to think a little, to see the connections and create the opportunities". 

After a lengthy scientific peer review process of the book proposal, in November 2012 a contract with Routledge Press, London, was signed. It detailed that a book would be researched and written, within 12 months, explaining to academics and practitioners why it was worth their while rethinking their approach and their expectation of what was achievable. It had to be 100,000 words long and include 200 full colour images, +/- 10%, or the contract would be forfeited. The title took a while to finalise but the editor decided the more key words the more likely it was that people would find the book, read it, and act. Landscape and Urban Design for Health and Well-Being: Using Healing, Sensory and Therapeutic Gardens was delivered as a manuscript, late, on the 6th January 2014. 

It took 8 months of Routledge Press's editing, copy editing and typesetting, checking and double-checking, to bring the book to fruition as a 318 page paper and ink reality. On 6th August 2014 it was released into the European market. 6 weeks later it was printed simultaneously in New York and Toronto and released in Canada, the US, NZ and Australia. 

Meanwhile, the real work has continued. The design team has grown. Greenstone Design UK has flourished, with new projects in Russia, Tanzania and of course, nationally around the UK. Enquiries for an eco resort project in Azerbaijan are responded to with as much dedication as a small London charity in need of a community space. Greenstone Design in NZ has grown to become recognised as providing leading research-based design and review services. Public space - the gritty streetscapes, hospitals, schools, dementia care and aged care, Early Childhood centres and social housing have all been subjected to the Greenstone Design signature salutogenic design appraisal. Examples from these projects fill the book, sitting alongside research and discoveries from the world's greatest thinkers.

There is a blog by Gayle Souter-Brown, about Salutogenic Design, on Routledge's website . Biophilia, bio-diverse planting, planting for health and well-being, soft landscapes and sensory-rich spaces are all part of the recipe for a healthy dose of Landscape and Urban Design for Health and Well-Being: Using Healing, Sensory and Therapeutic Gardens. 

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?