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Healthy by Design: How the places we inhabit determine our well-being

Everywhere she looks, Associate Professor Dr Deepti Adlakha finds connections between urban design and health. She has spent her life not just studying these connections, but experiencing them first-hand. “I remember biking to school when I was very young. Now, when I visit my home city, the cyclists appear to be risking their lives.”
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Healthy living starts with a social neighbourhood

How do you design houses to encourage healthy behaviour? Where in a neighbourhood do residents meet? And what makes a housing block inclusive? Questions like these have occupied Dr Birgit Jürgenhake for years. She started her career as an architect, and now she is also educating a new generation of conscious architects and designers with her master's course 'Towards an inclusive living environment'.
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Ensuring healthy ageing… for example, by moving in with your kids

Dr. Birgit Jürgenhake from the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment asks the master students in her graduation studio to spend a day riding around Delft in a wheelchair. On another day, they wear special glasses that limit their vision. Students even spend a week living in a care home, where they participate in daily activities. For Birgit, these experiences are essential: "Only through interaction with the elderly do we learn what they need from their place of residence."

Green corridors in cities improve our health and well-being

Greenery in a city is of importance. But what impact does it have on our health? And does it make a difference how we design the green spaces in our cities? Marcel Cardinali is researching how greener urban environments help reduce non-communicable diseases. And how we should design our built environment to optimise the effects of nature on our health.

Is it possible to engineer a socially sustainable city?

How do you build for a more inclusive, social and equitable city? Céline Janssen investigated the success factors for achieving social sustainability goals with urban development projects. “Social sustainability is about more than investing in amenities alone: it’s about residents actually using them.”

The Lancet Podcast with Deepti

In conversation with... Melanie Lowe and Deepti Adlakha

A healthy city is a city that fosters a sense of connection

How do you design cities in such a way as to allow people to live as pleasurably and healthily as possible? Professor Machiel van Dorst combines his knowledge of architecture with a background in environmental psychology. For his inaugural address, Van Dorst argues for focusing on the city at eye level: “To a certain extent, where you live determines who you are.”

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