Can the built environment help us stay healthy for longer? Can it inspire us to exercise more? How can we provide for clean water and air? What will our future hospitals look like? Does linking healthy lifestyle and good nutrition to well-designed cities offer a possible cure for Western diseases like obesity and diabetes? And moreover: how can architects and urban planners play a vital role in solving these issues? These questions – and many more – will take centre stage at the international conference Building the Future of Health.
Building the Future of Health revitalizes the once fertile coalition between urban planning, architecture and public health. In doing so, it underlines the great importance of healthy, well-designed cities in an ageing world. The conference distinguishes three tracks in which various relevant aspects are up for discussion: Healthy Cities and the Built Environment, Ageing in Place and The Architecture of Hospitals. In addition, a fourth track is presented in which the wider context of Healthy Ageing is explored.
Due to the conviction that the best solutions come about by exchanging knowledge and skills, the conference is of a highly interdisciplinary nature. For four days, it offers an inspiring environment in which architects, urban planners, landscape architects, medical researchers, environmental planners, policymakers, administrators, doctors, sociologists, (local) politicians and authorities, demographers and representatives from various other disciplines in the field of public health can meet.
The initiative for this conference was taken by the Healthy Ageing Network Northern Netherlands (HANNN), the Thomassen à Thuessink Foundation | UMCG, TNO and the Thomassen à Theussink chair of Architecture, Urbanism and Health at the University of Groningen.