Guest Blog: Julia Pedersen, Managing Partner, Hunter

Healthy places are not a ‘nice to have’. They are the next measure of value.

There are some subjects where the first question feels almost too obvious.

Should we be creating healthier places for people to live, work and spend their time?

Of course we should.

But this morning’s Movers & Shakers Property Breakfast at The Savoy quickly moved the conversation beyond that. The more useful question was: if we know the built environment has a profound effect on our health, why isn’t health already embedded more consistently in the way we plan, invest in, design and deliver places?

The breakfast, The Next Frontier in UK Real Estate Investment – Healthy Places to Live, Work & Play, brought together perspectives from public health, planning, infrastructure, regeneration, development and investment. Ben Smith of Arup opened the session before a panel chaired by Max Farrell of LDN Collective, with Lourdes Madigasekera-Elliott of East Sussex County Council, Clare Wildfire of Mott MacDonald, Matt Carpen of OPDC and Harry Knibb of Oxford Properties. 

Ben started with a provocation: what if the most valuable real estate of the future isn’t simply the smartest or most sustainable, but the healthiest?

The point was not to set health against sustainability. Quite the opposite. Many of the interventions that create healthier places also create better, more resilient and more sustainable ones and some are remarkably simple.

A visible staircase makes people more likely to use it. Good public transport encourages more active journeys. Green space supports physical and mental wellbeing. High streets, cafés, libraries and meanwhile spaces create opportunities for people to meet rather than live increasingly isolated lives. The individual interventions may seem small, but together they shape how a place supports us every day. 

And the evidence is difficult to ignore. Government guidance estimates that £2.1 billion a year in health costs could be saved if everyone in England had good access to green space, purely through the increased physical activity associated with those spaces. 

Max Farrell then sharpened the question for the panel. We no longer really need to debate whether the built environment affects health. The issue is what the property industry does about it. 

One of the most powerful examples came from recent research into London's Ultra Low Emission Zone. Researchers followed more than 3,400 children in London and Luton over five years. Following improvements in air quality, the proportion of London children with clinically impaired lung function fell from around one in seven to one in eleven. It is a striking demonstration that decisions about our urban environment can produce measurable changes in human health. 

The inequality attached to this agenda is equally stark. The Health Foundation reports an average 19-year gap in healthy life expectancy between people living in the most and least deprived areas. 

So what needs to change?

One recurring theme was timing.

Lourdes Madigasekera-Elliott argued strongly that public health needs to be involved at the earliest stages of placemaking, rather than consulted once the important decisions have already been taken. She also made a compelling case for developing a shared, almost “bilingual”, language between public health and property. Health professionals need to understand investment, risk and commercial realities, while developers and investors need a better understanding of health risk and outcomes. 

Another was the need to break out of professional silos.

Health cannot sit in one workstream, sustainability in another, commercial viability somewhere else and community engagement somewhere else again. Working together, decision makers can improve health, reduce emissions, strengthen social connection, support biodiversity and create economic value. The opportunity is in understanding those outcomes together rather than separately. 

And then came the commercial question.

Harry Knibb made the case for getting much closer to the occupier, describing how early engagement and co-design with an occupier can influence the specification of a building before planning, creating something more closely aligned to real human requirements while also supporting the commercial case. 

Healthy places cannot simply be a set of features added to a development. They need to respond to how people actually want to live and work.

There was lively debate about whether we need a concept of “health capital”, shared metrics or more consistent social impact frameworks. How do we measure what works? How do we account for benefits that may emerge over decades and be felt across healthcare, local government, employers, occupiers and communities rather than appearing neatly on one development appraisal?

One view from the panel was particularly direct: the evidence is already there. Rather than repeatedly asking whether healthier places create value, the next job is to bring the right disciplines together, including health economists where necessary, and translate that evidence into decisions. 

Perhaps that is the real challenge. 

A broader definition of what a successful place is would also help. One that asks not only whether a development is viable, sustainable and commercially successful, but whether the people who live and work there are more likely to be healthier, more connected and better able to live well because of it.

That feels like a measure of value the property industry should be prepared to take seriously.