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The third session of the Symposium looks at integrating health into the spatial planning system. This grew from Glasgow's membership in the WHO healthy cities network. It is about planning for people - putting their needs at the centre of the system. Planners have to balance a variety of needs (such as regeneration). The aim is to create an environment where people can maximise their health. People should be allowed a say in the development of their local area. Asks if quality of place is an issue in Glasgow - yes it is. There is too much derelict and vacant land, much of which is contaminated. They need to raise awareness of the links between planning and health and build motivation to take this forward. They are also building an evidence base and trying to change the way people work - to cross professional boundaries. He gives an example, the Health Impact Assessment of the East End Local Development Strategy. The results of this fed in to all future development plans for the area. It had a workshopping approach which gave a variety of community groups an equal voice in the planning. The city council trained some of their employees in health impact assessment. They also promoted the idea of integrated infrastructure, for example combining drainage with recreational areas using canals. Glasgow is now a test site for the Equally well project. We need to find a way to move health from a competitor to economics to being a complementary part of the planning process. The Centre still has work to do and aims to build on the momentum already generated.

Tessy Britton, Founder of Participatory City, London delivers the third lecture in this Seminar Series. Tessy describes the work of Participatory City and shares the research and analysis which has led to the development of a large scale Demonstration Neighbourhood in London. Participatory City is creating new structures designed to scale up practical participation, building collaborative activity into the fabric of everyday life and changing how we work together to achieve a more equal society. We all believe that people doing more things together will make our own and each other’s lives better. However, participation in neighbourhood projects is low. Wide spread participation in neighbourhoods is difficult to achieve and remains small and fragmented. While we stay attached to the notion of top down and bottom up we won’t be able to change the situation. Unless we redesign how participation works and invest in it properly we won’t be able to fully realise its potential as a key building block for building sustainable cities of the future. Realising the vision we have of vibrant places, made by everyone, for everyone, will require fundamentally changing the structures through which we work together.

This lecture examined the effects of urban design on health, placing it in the larger context of planning and public health, and proposed solutions that combine public health and urban planning strategies relevant for the 21st century. Dr Frumkin spoke of public health lying at the heart of urban planning in the early 20th century, but since then, the growth of cities has occurred in relatively unplanned ways. Urban sprawl - the expansion of cities into rural areas, heavy reliance on automobiles, low-density, low-mix land use patterns - represents one extreme, especially in North America and Australia, but increasingly in Europe as well. At the other extreme we have high density, overcrowded, creaking infrastructure. Frumkin described how urban planning and design may affect health in a variety of ways: threatening air quality, impeding physical activity, increasing injury risks, and eroding social capital are but a few examples.