A focus on the built environment
A Healthy Community provides multiple benefits
across numerous topic areas. There are very few
topics that can’t relate in some way to the health of a
community. To cover a truly comprehensive analysis
of its entire component parts could be an endless
- though enlightening - pursuit. In this Practice
Guide, the focus is on the elements that are the most
impacted by the built environment, where the “details
of everyday life” are shaped. Consider, for instance,
the auditory environment: the excited shouts of
children playing in a park, the happy exchange while
buying bread at the market, the low-level hum of
conversations present in cafes. This “soundscape” is
possible partly because of the attention to detail in the
creation of a community. It’s the details that have great
payoff: community design and its effects on creating
a high quality of life, with the resulting benefits for
physical, mental and social well-being.v
v The Public Health Agency of Canada, Canada Mortgage and Housing
Corporation, Infrastructure Canada, Transport Canada, Heart and Stroke
Foundation of Canada, and the National Collaborating Centres for
Public Health, among many other organizations, have all committed to
promoting healthy built environments (Public Healthy Agency of Canada
website, 2011)