PREHealth: Designing health into urban green and blue infrastructures – The need for action in planning, policies, and research. International Synthesis Report.

A growing body of research shows the positive effects of green open spaces on people’s health and well-being. However, there is still limited knowledge among local stakeholders, urban designers, and policy makers about how to plan, develop and maintain urban green and blue infrastructures to purposefully design more health and fitness into people’s lives. It is for these reasons that the focus of this report is set on the potential of the built environment to foster and promote health-related behaviour in the different socio-economic and cultural profiles of populations in European urban areas. It addresses the following research questions:

1. What is the relation between health-related behaviour (i.e. active travel, active recreational use, and social interaction) and urban open spaces (e.g. green spaces, squares, street networks, blue infrastructure)?
2. How do socio-economic and cultural profiles relate to health-related usage of open spaces? The following results are based on a systematic literature review of academic articles published between 2007-2017. In addition, expert interviews were carried out in order to obtain insight information about the partner countries and cities. We lay out that there is a strong and vast documented relationship between health-related behaviours, particularly for physical activity (PA), and the built environment (i.e. urban open spaces). Open spaces are ideal opportunities to be active and have been proven to provide various health benefits to citizens. They may act as determinants of health and support the promotion of a health related behaviour of city dwellers. Attributes such as quantity (e.g. amount, proximity, accessibility) and quality (e.g. cleanliness, paved roads, short routes from A to B, good state of trees and green areas) have the potential to enhance active travel, social interaction and active recreation. These attributes, both quantitative and qualitative, affect diversely health-related behaviours of the different socio-economic groups. Still, we underline the need for more efforts to put the aim of “health in all policies” in practice. We conclude that in order to achieve this goal, it is imperative to develop more holistic approaches to the problem, strengthen participatory efforts, especially with disadvantaged groups, and to increase the health literacy of the population, especially regarding the untapped potential of urban green and blue spaces.