FOLAR
Friends of the Landscape Archive at Reading

The Landscape of Public Health - FOLAR Annual Symposium 2024

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.

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 tis 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.

Peter SimcoeComment