ULI Building Healthy Places Toolkit

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5 Design visible, enticing stairs to encourage everyday use

  • Strategies
  • Insights
Photo: BUSarchitektur

Evidence Based Strategies

  • Provide open stairs that are unobstructed by turns or other obstacles.
  • Place stairs within 25 feet (7.6 meters) of an entrance and before any elevators.
  • Use aesthetic treatments such as vivid colors, artwork, and music.
  • Treat stairs with the same finishing standards as other public corridors in the building.

 Best Practice Strategies

  • Use windows and skylights to make enclosed stairs more appealing.
  • Make egress stairs accessible and visible. Use fire-rated glass panels in stair doors or special magnetic devices that hold open stair doors and release automatically in case of emergency.
  • In buildings where stairwells are locked for safety or security reasons, provide keys or access cards so building users have secure access.

Susan Powers

President, Urban Ventures
Denver, Colorado
 
  • Creating mixed-income and multigenerational communities that offer access to healthy food and a healthy lifestyle is what I’m most interested in, and I believe the result will be improved health. As a private developer at Aria, I have carried the same set of values with me, and addressing the health of residents in the context of the development is just part of how we think about all of our work now.
  • We are fortunate to be working with Regis University and the Colorado Health Foundation and with them are taking these concepts to the neighborhood scale, beyond the boundaries of our private development. The development community needs to be looking outside of our property lines because what we build impacts others, and the neighborhoods around our properties impact what we build.

Urban Land Institute

The Urban Land Institute provides leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide. ULI is an independent global nonprofit supported by its members.

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Building Healthy Places

The ULI Building Healthy Places Initiative is leveraging the power of ULI’s global networks to shape projects and places in ways that improve the health of people and communities.

Acknowledgements

The Center for Active Design served as contributing author and expert content advisor for this project.
The project was supported by the Colorado Health Foundation, the estate of Melvin Simon, and the ULI Foundation.

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