Designing Future Cities for Wellbeing

Christopher T. Boyko, Rachel Cooper, Nick Dunn, Christopher T. Boyko, Rachel Cooper, Nick Dunn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429894466
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Designing Future Cities for Wellbeing draws on original research that brings together dimensions of cities we know have a bearing on our health and wellbeing – including transportation, housing, energy, and foodways – and illustrates the role of design in delivering cities in the future that can enhance our health and wellbeing. It aims to demonstrate that cities are a complex interplay of these various dimensions that both shape and are shaped by existing and emerging city structures, governance, design, and planning. Explaining how to consider these interconnecting dimensions in the way in which professionals and citizens think about and design the city for future generations' health and wellbeing, therefore, is key. The chapters draw on UK case and research examples and make comparison to international cities and examples.

This book will be of great interest to researchers and students in planning, public policy, public health, and design.

1
Introduction

Christopher T. Boyko

Wellbeing in cities is vital for our collective future. Amid major sociodemographic, cultural, political, technological, environmental and economic upheaval, shift and change, the planet continues to urbanise and people are moving into urban areas, whether by choice or by force. Further, as the processes of urbanisation continue to affect greater areas of the planet, their impact in terms of climate change and other environmental issues is being felt by many who live in non-urban areas. Clearly, the challenges facing cities to ensure healthy populations are significant and appear intractable. To cope with this influx of people, cities are expanding horizontally and vertically, with new housing, roads, sewers and other vital infrastructure being designed, planned and built every day. However, coping is not enough these days: the current design, development and planning tools we use are proving incapable of capturing the messiness, the dynamic nature and the (im)possibilities of places and people (see Albrechts & Balducci, 2013; Albrechts, 2017).

Moreover, as our cities swell, citizens are becoming even more unhealthy. Levels of obesity, diabetes and malnutrition in cities are becoming worse (Feng et al., 2010; Pouliou & Elliott, 2010). The prevalence of private vehicles on our roads suggests we are not walking or cycling as much for commuting and leisure, and sitting in traffic amidst poor air quality (da Schio et al., 2019; Glazener & Khreis, 2019; Nieuwenhuijsen & Khreis, 2019; Stevenson & Gleeson, 2019). In an era of ‘digital convenience’, incidences of loneliness and isolation are on the increase (Knowles & Hanson, 2018; Nowland et al., 2018). And for those of us in employment, our work-life balance is on a knife-edge, with increases in both Leaveism (Hesketh & Cooper, 2010) and Presenteeism (Johns, 2010). Again, we are coping, but only just.

To counter this, we need to be designing our cities for more than just coping. Some smaller parts of cities, like neighbourhoods or developments, may be designed, planned and built, so that their inhabitants feel safe(r) and they experience a greater sense of privacy, or that the area embodies the principles of environmental sustainability. However, not many places, from building to city scale, start from a position of actively and consciously improving the wellbeing, health and/or quality of life of their citizens through design. In the UK, the National Health Service (NHS) began an initiative in 2014 to create several Healthy New Towns (NHS, 2014, 2015). These places are attempting to adopt ‘place-shaping’ urban design and housing to promote health and wellbeing while improving the delivery of health and social care. Internationally, the World Health Organization (WHO) has established two programmes that seek to improve health in cities. The first, WHO Healthy Cities, originated in 1978 and was inspired by the WHO European Health for All strategy and the Health21 targets. It aims to put health and public health on the political and social radar of cities around the world, highlighting the need for equity, interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration and action, participatory governance and solidarity (WHO, 2018). The second, WHO’s Age-Friendly Cities and Communities, formalised in 2006, endeavours to create age-friendly environments that progressively improve the match between people, their needs and the environments in which they live, work and recreate (Buffel et al., 2018). Such cities and communities can foster healthy and active ageing, ageing safely in-place and achieving positive contributions to the community while concomitantly retaining autonomy and dignity, and freedom from poverty (GNAFCC, 2017).

All three of these schemes have ‘health’ and ‘healthy’ at their core, yet are doing slightly different things. The first one embraces a ‘starting from scratch’ mentality and essentially is exploring how to save the nationally funded NHS money by thinking preventively. The latter two prioritise mending what we have in our cities to ensure that public health and ageing, respectively, are not overlooked in policy. But is ‘health’ and ‘healthy’ different from ‘wellbeing’? Is there an advantage to ‘starting from scratch’ versus a ‘mending’ approach when designing cities for wellbeing? And if we are getting better at designing cities with health/healthy in mind, can we also design cities of the future for wellbeing? In order to answer these questions, we will first look into the concept of wellbeing and discuss its relevance to this book.

What Is Wellbeing?

As with most concepts being defined by academics, finding an accepted definition of wellbeing is difficult. In part, this is because there are so many ways of achieving wellbeing, and how one defines it will very much depend on what is valued or viewed as important (Kahneman, 2011; Dodge et al., 2012). The concept of wellbeing also has had a long and rich history, beginning with scholars in Ancient Greece and finding homes in the fields of economics, geography, health, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, social sciences, sociology and policymaking (van Hoorn, 2007), meaning that many different ideas from many different people have been interwoven into our understanding(s) (Stoll, 2014).

Traditionally, notions of wellbeing were divided into two camps: hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonia primarily concerns the experience of pleasure and enjoyment. Aristippus first explained it as the physical pursuit of pleasure, with Epicurus suggesting that hedonism was attained through the intellectual enlightenment of one’s environment and the absence of pain (later took up by Bentham and others as they explored the balance between pleasure and pain). More recently, positive psychologists and behavioural economists have referred to hedonia as the presence of positive emotions/affect, the absence of negative emotions/affect and satisfaction (Thompson & Marks, 2008). Such a focus implies that the individual or a subjective approach to evaluating life events is the best way to measure hedonia (Diener et al., 1999).

Alternatively, eudaimonia refers to the attainment of wellbeing through worthwhile undertakings and the pursuit of what Aristotle called a virtuous, ‘good life’ (Henderson & Knight, 2012). Instead of a focus on achieving individual needs or desires – not all of which will result in wellbeing if fulfilled – eudaimonia emphasises personal growth and self-actualisation (Ryan & Deci, 2001). This may be accomplished through particular acts of kindness, honesty and justice (Henderson & Knight, 2012), which Waterman (1993) suggests are rooted in human nature. In terms of measuring eudaimonia, then, scholars believe that a more objective approach is needed, one that involves people being holistically engaged and challenged to attain positive psychological functioning through characteristics including autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, purpose in life and self-acceptance (Ryff, 1995).

In recent years, more integrated approaches have been developed in recognition of the multi-dimensionality of wellbeing (e.g. Diener, 2009; Michaelson et al., 2009; Stiglitz et al., 2009). One of the most prominent is ‘flourishing’, which concerns the experience of life going well, and of feeling good and functioning effectively (Huppert & So, 2013). Flourishing pertains not just to the absence of disorder, but includes both hedonic and eudaimonic components. It also involves maintaining a high level of mental wellbeing (Ryff & Singer 1998; Keyes, 2002; Huppert & So, 2009a, b, 2013). Seligman’s (2011) PERMA model offers one way to understand wellbeing via flourishing. Through five building blocks for a flourishing life – positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment – Seligman affirms that wellbeing is not just one, single concept, but is multi-dimensional in scale and should be measured both subjectively and objectively.

Given what we know about wellbeing from the above section, and taking inspiration from Huppert and So’s (2013) definition of flourishing, the following description feels appropriate for this book: wellbeing is about doing well, feeling good, doing good and feeling well (White, 2010)¹ (see Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 A conceptualisation of White’s (2010) definition of wellbeing.

Source: Serena Pollastri.

‘Doing well’ refers to a certain, material standard of living and/or economic prosperity. ‘Feeling good’ involves personal, subjective perceptions of levels of satisfaction. ‘Doing good’ relates to a more collective, shared understanding of how the world is and should be. ‘Feeling well’ stresses the significance of health to wellbeing. Thus, White’s (2010) definition includes both subjective and objective dimensions alongside personal and collective notions of wellbeing. It also incorporates the idea of effective functioning via a link to health. Finally, this description demonstrates that wellbeing is not static; rather, it is a dynamic concept that allows people to assess and compare how they are doing, both at present and in the past. But what about future wellbeing? How can we assess our wellbeing at a later point in life? And can cities be designed with our future wellbeing in mind?

How Does Wellbeing Feature in the Design of Future Cities?

Visions for future cities have existed for hundreds of years, driven by a strong desire for change in the urban environment and in transforming our links with urban space (Mansfield, 1990; Easton, 2002). Through radical grand plans, like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, to slightly smaller – and still radical! – ideas, such as Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith’s Park Hill estate in Sheffield, visions of cities have challenged the status quo, sought to raise or resolve problems facing societies and have acted as critical sounding boards for the evaluation of city form. However, while most visualisations are successful at suggesting how and where people will live, work and move around, they rarely are converted into concrete plans. As Dunn et al. (2014) state: ‘Even in those projects where the design was subsequently constructed in reality the subtleties and joie de vivre are lost’ (p. 13, emphasis author).

On the whole, visions that are created for cities of the future tend to be quite binary in their outlook: either dystopian or utopian. With the former, places are uncomfortably divided into haves and have nots. A small minority of people often possess all of the resources and power (should a complete breakdown of governance not already exist), leaving the majority to live in squalor and fear. With the latter, there is a presumption that everyone is benefiting from living in a ‘perfect’ world of sustainability and benevolence. Nonetheless, this may not be true, as someone always seems to be left out of nirvana.

In unpacking these visions, the wellbeing of the people within dystopian or utopian futures may seem obvious: a minority of people with the power are happy in dystopian futures and everyone is happy in utopian futures. However, this might not be the case, and wellbeing may be a far more subtle thing to assess....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 What Do City Dwellers Want for Themselves and Their Cities? Implications for Planning Liveable Cities
• 3 Mobilities for Wellbeing: Hedonism or Eudaimonism?
• 4 Transport and Wellbeing in the Future City
• 5 Nature’s Contribution to Health and Wellbeing in the City
• 6 Energy, Wellbeing and Cities
• 7 Design for Food and Wellbeing in Future Cities
• 8 Future-Proofing Residential Environments for Children’s Wellbeing: A Review of Evidence and Design Implications
• 9 From Precarity to Interdependence: The Role of Age-Friendly Communities in Promoting Wellbeing in Excluded Communities
• 10 Buildings for Health, Cities for Wellbeing
• 11 Health, Wellbeing and Urban Design
• 12 Making Space for Culture and Wellbeing in the City
• 13 Directions for Change in Technology and Wellbeing in the City
• 14 Work, Wellbeing and the City
• 15 Designing Future Cities for Wellbeing: A Summary of Implications for Design
• Index