It is surprising how a built environment can affect the public’s health. Studies have shown that how an active lifestyle, proper nutrition can help with health. However, many designed spaces and urban conditions are not well prepared to ease health and wellness. People living in a poorly designed physical environment may suffer from serious issues.
Most of the deaths happening in the United States are because of heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular diseases, strokes, chronic lower respiratory diseases such as Asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema, and unintentional injuries. Toxic conditions can also affect diseases like Asthma. These kinds of diseases can be triggered by pollen and grass. The problem here is that many urban environments don’t have healthy and proper open spaces. That can also lead to an increase of using alcohol and tobacco. Most of the “open spaces” are covered with broken glasses and garbage and lack a sense of community. Healthy Urban design has been forgotten. Development centering “cars” required more roads, highways, and parking lots since the 1950s, leading to fewer parks and open spaces, which will produce air pollution and fewer spaces for meditation, running, walking, or relaxing.
As designers, we can change some of our typical design strategies. Designing more useful stairs so that people will have more physical activities, designing buildings with more access to natural light, creating green spaces in the working and living environment, creating more biking trails instead of building more highways, using proper materials that won’t harm people and the environment can be some design ideas to have in mind. And the most important thing is to pay attention to people living in poverty. Homelessness is another factor that can cause damages to health because of the lack of a healthy built environment. Designers need to keep in mind that space is not just about how it looks; it’s about how it feels and its impact on people’s health. But we are not in charge of all these decisions. Law influences the built environment in many ways, such as zoning, building codes, economic incentives, environmental regulations. Besides designers, the public health community must affect people in charge to enforce laws that will support people’s health in built environment spaces. Clean shelter, clean water, and a clean environment is needed for all types of people. It’s always expensive to design and build healthy spaces, but the health and wellbeing of all people is the most important thing to consider.
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