Landscape of Public Health - FOLAR Symposium 2024
The Landscape of Public Health is possibly one of the most important subjects FOLAR has tackled - not just health, but how public open space and designed landscapes have been used in the past for the benefit of the general public. As populations have becomes increasingly more urban in the 20C, landscape architects and managers working today in this area as academics and practitioners can demonstrate, with confidence and research-based evidence, to landscape and associated professions, local and central government politicians, and the public, what can be achieved today, and how this can be done, and how long term management needs to be part of this healthy uplift for the population. The most important benefit, apart from nurturing a generally healthier population, is reducing the differences in health between the most economically deprived populations and those better off .
One theme for the FOLAR symposia is how the past can inform the present and the future. There is definitely a lot of past when it comes to wise city elders understanding and believing ie knowing the connection between being outside and being healthy. One speaker at this event looks back to ancient civilisations to demonstrate this. But for some time now this ‘knowing’ is deemed not enough to convince leaders today to provide funding to create or maintain green spaces, they want evidence. Another of the speakers says enough - we have more than enough research, stop please! As can be expected - with two or so serial career researchers present – this view was swiftly challenged.
It is not enough to be outside. The quality of public green space has to be of a particular standard, and it has to be accessible for all ages and all people. Green space is equigenic - ie it is associated with reducing the difference in health between the most economically deprived people and those better off. This has been proven through research. And the mechanisms linking landscape and health are explained in the final talk.
This was a thought provoking symposium, and it generated one of the best question and answer sessions we have had so far.
1. Welcome and Introduction
In his introduction Tim Gale stated that 4.6m adults seek help, each year, for mental health difficulties. However, while the need for sunlight, clean air and water, and green open space with trees - fundamental elements not only for sustaining a healthy population, but also for landscape architecture - have always been important in city design, even today, these are not available equally for all the population.
Tim Gale is a Past President of the Landscape Institute, He has practised in local government and private practice on projects in the UK and abroad. He was a member of the Urban Green Spaces Task Force and a member of the steering group for CABE Space. Since leaving employment he is a member of the Regional Design Panel and is currently organising the Hal Moggridge celebration for FOLAR next September. Gardening and painting are also important activities.
2. Design for health in public parks - the archaeology of outdoor health provision
It was surprising to hear Jan Woudstra start his presentation saying that this is not a subject he has spent time researching (until he received FOLAR’s invitation). The reason is that he always thought in creating good landscapes you are taking care of peoples health, and and that remains his conclusion having prepared this presentation – that landscape is for peoples’ health. He is interested and curious about so many landscape related topics, and in his literature search on this subject he wanted to know how design is addressed in connection with public health and what are the sources. He takes us on a richly informative tour from ancient civilisations and then predominantly in the UK though to the 21st century, presenting town walks, diverse outdoor activities, major public health issues eventually dealt with by legislation, and the creation of more open spaces, including urban public parks.
Jan Woudstra is a landscape architect and historian. After working in private practice and teaching part-time at the Architectural Association, he joined the University of Sheffield in 1995, where he is a Reader in Landscape History and Theory. He has published widely, including The Regeneration of Public Parks (2000), and has provided critical reviews of conservation practice and public parks. He has recently published Teaching Landscape History, together with David Jacques and Robert Holden, and his forthcoming book is on Robert Marnock, the ‘most successful landscape gardener’ of the nineteenth century. Since this symposium, Jan Woudstra has been appointed Honorary Professor at University of Sheffield.
3. Bermondsey Beautification 1920-1940
Robert Holden has long been interested in the work of Alfred and Ada Salter and in his presentation he recreates many different aspects of local life in Bermondsey in the early 1900s, from noxious industries, the rise of infectious life-threatening diseases, squalid housing and cramped living conditions. Entering this bleak place are Alfred and Ada Salter working via different means to bring about positive change to the lives of local people. Alfred was local doctor and became Bermondsey MP and Ada worked to improve housing rising to be the Mayor of Bermondsey, amongst many other initiatives she set up the Beautification Committee, and implemented an extensive tree planting scheme on new estates and streets in Bermondsey, with many of the trees surviving today.
Robert Holden is a landscape architect with forty years of landscape practice overlapping with three decades of teaching, including two decades at Greenwich and then a short stint at Istanbul Technical University before retirement in 2014. Brought up in Preston he is an adopted Londoner and currently manure monitor for the Gunsite Allotments in Dulwich. He has written widely on technical matters.
4. The Role of Public Parks during COVID - Impact and Outcomes of a Global Pandemic
There will not be many people in as good a position as Paul Rabbitts - an experienced Parks Manager and historian of public parks - to talk on this subject. The major park building movement in the UK was enabled by the 1875 Public Health Act, and today there are 27,000 public parks with the majority implemented by 1914. This represents an extraordinary investment and a considerable achievement, and undoubtedly like many acts of parliament many were involved getting this need recognised. In the 21C COVID caused significant management challenges for the public parks both during the pandemic and afterwards, with loss of revenue, loss of volunteer groups, but on the plus side visits from many people who had never been to a park before, but this also had its issues. How were these dealt with - or have they been resolved? How you learn to be a park manager? How do you protect the heritage and cultural value of a park when there is no statutory obligation for a local authority to support its park? (Unfortunately there were several technical difficulties at the beginning of this talk and it doesn't start properly until about 7 minutes in - but these first seven minutes are full of gems so we decided to keep them before the talk proper starts.)
Paul Rabbitts is an experienced Parks Manager of over 35 years, managing parks from Carlisle, Middlesbrough, Watford, Southend-on-Sea to currently Norwich City Council. He is Chair and Founder Member of the Parks Management Association, a published author, a lapsed landscape architect and has just completed his PhD by Publication at the University of East Anglia on his favourite subject -The Victorian and Edwardian Bandstand
5. Therapeutic Gardens (Landscapes) and their relationship to the concept of Biophilia (Biophilic Design)
Biophilia has become one of the most popular topics for landscape undergraduates across the world says Jamie Liversedge in his presentation. Biophilia is about recognising people's natural and innate connection with nature, and being able to measure its therapeutic benefits. But there is a void between the theory and the practice of biophilic design, and a need to establish how definitions can be translated into design. What this talk offers in leaps and bounds is a comprehensive literature review of published key texts, covering every aspect of this subject. Landscape architecture needs a more rigorous theoretical basis Jamie says, led by evidence based design.
Jamie Liversedge is a landscape architect, academic and master planner, having worked around the world for over 35years, designing cities, resorts, hospitals, parks, gardens and country estates. He is currently the Academic Course Leader for BA Landscape Architecture at the University of Gloucestershire.
6. Ecological Public Health – the future of salutogenic landscapes
The direction Catharine Ward Thompson takes in her research is based on salutogenesis, an approach to human health that examines the factors contributing to the promotion and maintenance of physical and mental well-being rather than disease. Having the types of environment that support good health makes much better economic and cost effective sense for public health. Landscape architecture and management can do a lot to support people in good health through planning, designing and managing the outdoor environment.
Green space is eugenic - it is associated with reducing the difference in health and life expectancy between the most economically deprived people and those better off. There is a need to prove the link between landscape and improved health, and also to determine the mechanisms behind access to green space and health. And this is what Catharine Ward Thompson quietly shares with us here. A lifetime's research and collaborations with others looking at different age groups, over different time periods and their interaction with a range of landscapes reveals many exciting conclusions, instinctively known and understood by Paxton and Olmsted and Geddes and many others, and here based on peer reviewed evidence. There is huge opportunity with this to fight for and protect the role of landscape anew.
Catharine Ward Thompson is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of OPENspace Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh. Her work focuses on inclusive access to outdoor environments and links between landscape and health. She is currently an investigator on GroundsWell: a major, UK collaboration to prevent non-communicable disease through the health-supporting benefits of access to urban green and blue space.
7. Summary Q+A and discussion
Tim Gale provides a summary of key points from each of the talks, and then steers the Q+A and discussion
This looked at the benefits of parks, the standards set by the green flag awards, quality of place counts for more than quantity, how in Norwich developing a hierarchy of parks based on dominant function is the strategy now being adopted. Who should we be influencing in society today? Local politicians. Good communications are vital to sell key points succinctly. How many landscape architects become politicians? Joseph Paxton was one example. Working with government agencies results in repackaging existing papers, but who reads them? Do we continue reinventing the wheel? Environmental justice demonstrated digitally on heat maps provide powerful planning tool. How to make knowledge hubs (libraries - and archives?) work for landscape architects when practices rarely encourage research? the parks sector is disjointed - a government criticism, if this can be cracked there is a better chance of influencing people. CABE Space and their two week leadership courses; NHS is the only gem the public recognise in UK; landscape is a gem too; Nordic countries have 5-6 gems; some wag suggested the gem could be the 'Natural Health Service'. Supplements listing university courses don't include landscape architecture. students get into landscape because they know someone/family connection who is landscape architect. Hence only180 home students a year study landscape architecture.
The Landscape Institute collection at MERL: https://merl.reading.ac.uk/collections/landscape-institute/
More information about FOLAR and joining: https://www.folar.uk
Speakers: Dr Jan Woudstra, Robert Holden, Paul Rabbitts, Jamie Liversedge and Professor Catharine Ward Thompson
Chair: Tim Gale
November 2024 at The MERL and online