Designing Cities for Health and Resilience

The built environment shapes health outcomes in ways that are often invisible until they are measured. Street layout influences physical activity levels, density and access to greenspace affect mental health, and indoor conditions — including air quality, noise, and daylight — shape the wellbeing of building occupants over time. Design decisions made at the scale of the room, building, street, and neighbourhood accumulate into measurable differences in population health, often impacting most those communities with the least capacity to mitigate poor environmental conditions.

For architects and urban planners, health is increasingly a core design requirement rather than an incidental outcome. Planning authorities, public health bodies, and clients now expect projects to demonstrate how they support health outcomes. Tools such as health impact assessments and spatial data platforms are becoming standard in identifying and addressing health risks at the neighbourhood scale. Understanding how to integrate health into design processes, interpret the evidence behind design interventions, and measure performance is now an essential professional skill.

This session examines health and resilience as design and planning disciplines. It covers the spatial determinants of health, evidence-based strategies at building and neighbourhood scales, the relationship between climate resilience and public health, and the use of spatial data and satellite-derived insights to identify risks and monitor outcomes in the built environment.