Planning Australia’s Healthy Built Environments

Planning Australia’s Healthy Built Environments shines a quintessentially Australian light on the links between land use planning and human health. A burgeoning body of empirical research demonstrates the ways urban structure and governance influences human health—and Australia is playing a pivotal role in developing understandings of the relationships between health and the built environment. This book takes a retrospective look at many of the challenges faced in pushing the healthy built environment agenda forward. It provides a clear and theoretically sound framework to inform this work into the future. With an emphasis on context and the pursuit of equity, Jennifer L. Kent and Susan Thompson supply specific ways to better incorporate idiosyncrasies of place and culture into urban planning interventions for health promotion. By chronicling the ways health and the built environment scholarship and practice can work together, Planning Australia’s Healthy Built Environments enters into new theoretical and practical debates in this critically important area of research. This book will resonate with both health and built environment scholars and practitioners working to create sustainable and health-supportive urban environments.

"Planning Australia’s Healthy Built Environments is an absorbing examination of the impacts of urban planning on the physical and mental health of the Australian people. This exceptionally readable book furthers understanding of the role urban planning plays in creating a healthy built environment and will inspire practitioners, educators and policy makers." -Norma Shankie-Williams MPIA, MRTPI, Chair, NSW Healthy Planning Expert Working Group, Australia"This book has a marvellous clarity of structure and language. It places health (local and global) at the heart of the planning of the built environment, challenging politicians, developers and professionals to recognise the urgent need for change. The argument for a more equitable environment is crystal clear. The evidence, expressed with cool objectivity, irrefutable." -Hugh Barton, Emeritus Professor of Planning, Health and Sustainability, WHO Collaborating Centre for Healthy Urban Environments, University of the West of England, Bristol

Jennifer L. Kent is a Research Fellow in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. Jennifer’s research interests are at the intersections between urban planning, transport and health. She publishes regularly in high-ranking scholarly journals, and her work is used to inform policy in Australia. Prior to commencing a career in academia, she worked as a planner both for government and as a consultant.Susan Thompson is Professor of Planning in the Faculty of the Built Environment at The University of New South Wales. Susan’s academic career encompasses research and teaching in social and cultural planning, qualitative research methodologies and healthy built environments. She has received numerous awards for her contributions to urban planning in Australia, including the Sidney Luker Memorial Medal in 2015 and the Australian Urban Research Medal in 2017.