Planning

An ideal healthy environment includes incentives for people to walk and exercise, safe areas for children to play outside, street-friendly building design that promotes a sense of safety and interaction between neighbours, places for people to come together that are both enjoyable and accessible for everyone, and a good public transport system.

The connection between health – physical, mental and social – and the built environment is being recognised by governments, planners and health experts, particularly as Melbourne is expected to grow by up to 1 million people and 620,000 households by 2030.

Planning our future environments

VicHealth collaborates with a range of organisations, government departments and individuals to ensure that health is built into the planning of our future environments:

• Collaborations with government and non-government organisations have led to projects such as the Walking School Bus Program.
• VicHealth's Food for All Program is encouraging local government authorities to improve integrated planning of those things that influence access to food such as transport, housing, economic development and land use.
• VicHealth awarded a grant to the Planning Institute of Australia (Victoria) to build the capacity of planners to influence local urban design so that health is ‘planned in’ rather than ‘planned out’.
• A VicHealth funded initiative called the Victorian Community Indicators Project is designed to support local governments develop and use community indicators as tools for measuring health, wellbeing and sustainability and for improving citizen engagement, community planning and policy making.
• This project builds on and complements Leading the Way: Councils Creating Healthier Communities, a resource explaining the factors which influence health and assisting councils to integrate their planning to promote health.
• VicHealth, the Planning Institute of Australia (Victoria) and the Department of Human Services are working together on Planning for Health to better understand the relationship between urban infrastructure and the extent to which people chose to walk, cycle or drive.
• VicHealth and ICLEI Oceania's Cities for Climate Protection Australia Program have joined forces to assist councils to build the case for investing in walking and cycling to reduce greenhouse emissions.
• VicHealth also funds research, such as Dr Jo Salmon’s investigation into the link between local environment and physical activity; Dr Anna Timperio’s examination of the influence of individual, social and environmental factors on eating, physical activity and risk of obesity; Dr Colin Bell’s work on the environmental causes of obesity and measuring preventative approaches; and Dr Anne Kavanagh's work on the environmental and individual determinants of physical activity and dietary behaviour.