Key Urban Health Evidence
FOOD
Accessibility, quality and affordability of healthy food options can drive the demand for and consumption of a healthy diet.
NATURAL ENVIRONMENT
Proximity to high quality green space reduces stress, anxiety and improves health and wellbeing.
Key messages from a literature review on the impact of the built environment on health
Our systematic review focused on studies that valued the links between health and the built environment, covering five areas:
- Transport
- Neighbourhood Design
- Natural Environment
- Buildings
- Food
It returned over 26,000 papers from eight electronic databases. These were filtered further and resulted in 209 eligible papers. It is the first time the associations between
health and the built environment have been so comprehensively reviewed.
- It has revealed the quality and nature of evidence to date.
- The review has enabled gap analysis: inparticular, there are gaps concerning health impacts of amenities, crime and the food environment.
- Findings form the core evidence base for our economic valuation work.
- The weighted findings add detail and nuance to existing knowledge base.
