How can urban design of greenery and buildings contribute to better health and well-being in times of climate change and biodiversity loss? This course explores different disciplinary perspectives on how the built environment can support physical activity, recreation and social interaction.
The course provides knowledge about how urban environments can be designed to promote human health and psychological well-being. The focus is on the individual’s experience of their neighbourhood environment and how different elements of the city – buildings, streetscapes, and green and blue spaces – influence how people move, interact and psychologically restore.
During the course you will explore how different user groups relate to their local environment and how urban design can contribute to more inclusive and health-promoting places. The teaching includes lectures, seminars and assignments carried out in the student’s local environment.
Read the course syllabus here
Content and Methodology
Our teaching approach is adopted from interdisciplinary teaching in sustainability science. Our objective is to facilitate students’ capacity to analyse their local environment using knowledge derived from public health, physical health, environmental psychology, architecture/landscape architecture and ecology. We strive to promotereflective thinking and facilitate effective communication with society.
The course is structured as four integrated modules. Each module is structured as
- online lectures and associated readings and quizzes available online to introduce theories and concepts
- seminars-journal club to stimulate reflection and critical thinking
- a place-based assignment aiming to contextualised learning and considerations of broader impacts.
Module 1: An interdisciplinary approach to healthy urban living
Module 1 serves as the bridge and runs over the entire course period. The module involves collaboration across disciplines, as well as between academia and practice, provides interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. The module introduces and defines public urban space to discuss the value of the local to tackle global issues.
Module 2: Health benefits of urban environments designed for physical activity and health.
This module focuses on physical activity in the neighbourhood as a way of preventing and treating noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and in preventing hypertension, overweight, and obesity, while enhancing overall well-being.
Module 3: Experience of urban spaces and psychological well-being.
The focus is upon people’s experiences of the built environment, how experience and emotions can be theoretically described and empirically assessed to develop heath promoting neighbourhood environments.
Module 4: Biodiversity and urban ecosystems in a changing world.
This module focuses on biodiversity and its connections to human health via ecosystem functions and services, and how urban biodiversity conservation and climate adaptation can contribute to healthy living conditions for urban populations.
