ULI Building Healthy Places Toolkit

Menu
  • Home
  • 21 Recommendations
  • Applications
  • Projects
  • About
  • Stay Connected
  • Share
Linkedin Facebook Tweeter Google+ +

19 Increase access to nature

  • Strategies
  • Insights
Photo: CapitaLand Singapore/Who Hup [Private] Limited

Evidence Based Strategies

  • Maximize access to natural areas. Preserve and restore natural areas within and around your project.
  • Plant trees, which support air quality, provide shade, and increase outdoor comfort. Include trees in parks and plazas and along sidewalks.
  • Provide views of nature through strategic placement of windows, indoor plants, or pictures of nature.

Best Practice Strategies

  • Install green roofs and green walls, where possible, to improve air quality and aesthetics.
  • Use trees and plantings to cultivate an appropriate balance between sunlight and shade, given local climate conditions.
  • Provide seating and opportunities for rest within parks and green spaces.

Elizabeth Shreeve

Principal, SWA Group
Sausalito, California
 
  • Nature has tremendous restorative power, and we need to get people closer to it. Landscape architects design places that are intrinsically supportive of health—trails, parks, plazas, the spaces between buildings. At Guthrie Green in Tulsa, we designed a park for the George Kaiser Family Foundation that now hosts an amazing lineup of exercise classes, such as yoga, tai chi, and belly dancing. The lawn suffers, but the people love it! At UC Davis West Village, we prepared the master plan for a new zero-net-energy community where bicycling is the primary mode of transportation.
  • These are the sorts of places where we love to walk and bicycle, where we play with our children and friends. The landscape is where we get healthy.

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.

  • Visit Site
  • Join Us
  • ULI Locations

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.

  • linkedin
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • youtube
  • googleplus
  • flickr
© Urban Land Institute. All rights reserved.