Healthy places: exploring the evidence.
"Sense of place" is a widely discussed concept in fields as diverse as geography, environmental psychology, and art, but it has little traction in the field of public health. The health impact of place includes physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and aesthetic outcomes. In this article, the author introduces sense of place as a public health construct. While many recommendations for "good places" are available, few are based on empirical evidence, and thus they are incompatible with current public health practice. Evidence-based recommendations for healthy place making could have important public health implications. Four aspects of the built environment, at different spatial scales-nature contact, buildings, public spaces, and urban form-are identified as offering promising opportunities for public health research, and potential research agendas for each are discussed.
Frumkin
Howard
H
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 1518 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. medhf@sph.emory.edu
D002958:City Planning; D018672:Community Health Planning; D036262:Empirical Research; D004779:Environment Design; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication; D011634:Public Health; D011998:Recreation; D012931:Social Environment; D014186:Transportation; D014481:United States