Guiding Principles of the Checklist
Four key principles guide the development and implementation of the Healthy Urban Development Checklist: equity, early engagement, interdependence, and building partnerships.
1. Equity
Equity is understood here to mean that access to all aspects of a community (including health, safety, open space, transport and economic development) is fair to all residents regardless of socioeconomic status, cultural background, gender, age or ability.
Urban development policies, plans and proposals must recognise the importance of equity and the effect of planning intervention on it. Urban planning and development can play a significant role in ensuring that new and existing community members have equal access to a range of facilities and services including health, education, employment and social support and that there is equal access to health promoting features of urban development including open space, safe pedestrian and cycling environments, gathering places and natural areas.
‘Understanding the community’ provides an outline to identify who the potentially affected community is and which groups in that community may be most vulnerable. Equity issues continue to be considered throughout the Checklist with a number of questions addressing equity in terms of access to opportunities, services and facilities and the equal distribution of potential impacts (both positive and negative).
2. Early engagement
Maximum influence can be exercised when there are opportunities to participate in the policy or plan making process and contribute at the earliest possible stages of a project’s inception. This early or ‘upstream’ participation, and the ability to consider health from the start, is a much more effective approach than asking a proponent to amend an already formulated or drafted policy, plan or proposal to address health issues.
While a Checklist such as this provides a tool to promote early engagement, knowledge of the planning system and the development process is critical to ensure that health professionals have the opportunity to participate early in the process.
3. Interdependence
While this Checklist is divided into healthy development characteristics chapters that each deal with a specific element of healthy urban development, it is important to maintain an understanding of the links between these elements and the interdependence of the relationships between them.
The ‘health map’ highlights the interdependent nature of the various factors that contribute to health.
4. Building partnerships
Healthy urban development is occurring at the interface between two distinct, but related, professions in planning and health. Cross-sectoral partnerships are essential to ensuring that the work remains relevant and maximum influence and benefit is achieved.
An understanding of the wider determinants of health opens up a range of opportunities for collaboration and partnerships. Planning professionals in all levels of government and private practice and health professionals have much to contribute to each other’s work.
As mentioned, early engagement is likely to be important and can significantly enhance the opportunities for influence. Collaborative relationships between health workers and planners will be important for early engagement to be realised. There are a range of opportunities for education across the sectors as well, with long term benefits from health workers understanding more about planning and planners understanding more about health.
Capacity building
Capacity building is an important aspect of building partnerships that has both external and internal dimensions. Importantly, internal capacity building within health systems also has implications for the ongoing sustainability and effectiveness of promoting healthy urban development. Capacity building is important to the implementation of the Checklist and is a strategy to maximise its effectiveness. It is recognised that the Checklist is a tool that requires an ongoing process of engagement and mutual development between planners and health workers. This will ensure that planning and development become more health promoting over time.