Built Environment and Health

The term “built environment” refers to the man-made surroundings that serve as the backdrop for human behavior. These surroundings can range from buildings and parks or other green spaces to neighborhoods and cities, including the supporting infrastructure, such as water supply, energy networks, and transportation. The built environment integrates physical elements and energy into forms for habitation, employment, and recreation. It is a structural, geographical, and social output of human effort.

Disease dynamics and people's health are significantly influenced by the built environment. Moreover, it plays a major role in the prevention and control of infectious and chronic diseases in both humans and animals.

Urban planning was devised to prevent disease and encourage a healthy lifestyle. During the early nineteenth and twentieth century, especially in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, cities were not as they are today. People would live in cramped spaces, next to factories, without any drainage or plumbing systems, sanitary facilities, or adequate ventilation systems, and did not consume enough nutritious food. Such living and working conditions paved the way for disease outbreaks.

With little understanding of how disease transmission and infection worked, thousands succumbed to cholera, tuberculosis, and typhoid epidemics.

However, there was a gradual acknowledgment that their built environment had something to do with it. This prompted the rebuilding of cities, with the aim of improving overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions. Surprisingly, however, these attempts to prevent infectious disease in the built environment during the late 1800s and early 1900s ultimately led to chronic diseases in the twenty-first century. Areas were distributed into separate zones – commercial zones for working and suburban zones for residing and relaxing. The subsequent invention of cars, combined with the suburbs’ dispersed layout, encouraged dependency on the automobile, leading to a decrease in walking or cycling, stalling physical activity among people, and increasing pollution in the environment, which has negative consequences on sedentary behavior, obesity, and chronic respiratory conditions.

Further developments in construction and technology have made relying on the built environment more natural than nature itself. This has led to an increase in non-communicable diseases such as obesity, coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. In a related vein, the connection between mental health and the built environment, particularly in urban centers, is growing in significance. Chronic illnesses like depression have been connected to social and physical features of the built environment, including housing quality, crowding, and urban design of roadways and green areas, as well as elements like social isolation and poverty in the neighborhood.

The relationship between public health and the built environment appeared to be eroding by the middle of the 20th century. Since infectious diseases were under control, the design and development of cities began to be seen as a question of aesthetic appeal or economics rather than health. When public health professionals studied the built environment, they focused more on smaller-scale planning issues like lead paint than on larger-scale ones like human habits like smoking.

The impact of the built environment on health can be direct, for instance, by altering the environmental quality, or indirect, by influencing behaviors that have an impact on disease transmission and health. These may occur at various scales, ranging from an individual level to society at large. Pathogen density varies between habitats, and this affects the dynamics of disease transmission. Some environments harbor more pathogens than others. Furthermore, movement patterns can be influenced by variations in resource distribution across locations, which might expose people to new infections but also improve their health by promoting activity.

It is possible to alter the built environment to encourage healthy habits and lower the risk of illness.

The amount of physical activity a person engages in also depends on the built environment. For instance, insufficient or non-existent cycling or pedestrian paths and sidewalks foster sedentary behavior. Poor health outcomes brought on by these behaviors include non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and various types of cancer. Man is a social animal, and a person’s social and cultural interactions are just as important as physical ones. This is possible only where it is simple to engage in physical activity for transportation and entertainment, socialize with family and the local community, and eat nourishing foods that are readily available in stores and picked fresh from nearby gardens.

Building components and building-related issues also have an impact on human health. These include the building's surroundings, its location, its design, materials, upkeep, accessibility, safety, and management (in terms of thermal comfort, lighting, etc.). It is easier to recognize and manage some health effects than others. For instance, emissions from building materials (like formaldehyde) may be easily measured, and many jurisdictions have laws imposing limitations on these emissions.

The COVID-19 pandemic affects society and the economy in addition to its direct and indirect human costs (and thus people). Additionally, it serves as a stress test for the way our constructed world affects us.

It affects how we build structures, set up cities and communities, prioritize commercial real estate, view work, set up care, move around, work with public places, utilize green spaces, approach urban design and planning, utilize architecture, etc. We continue to have an anthropocentric mindset and attempt to "defeat" nature in situations where natural occurrences put us at risk, despite our best efforts to be more considerate of the environment.

On the other hand, humans continue to exploit resources and construct infrastructure that endangers "nature" in the wider context. The difficulties are far from over, and it has to be seen how COVID will affect the built environment and how it will fit into some sort of & quot; new normal."

Urban planning initiatives have now started to focus on both diet and physical activity, or the energy balance, by taking into account the accessibility, affordability, and availability of healthy foods as well as elements of the built environment (like density, mixed use, and design features) to promote physical activity.

We need to foster collaborations between many fields, including public health law, architecture, urban planning, and transportation, to promote healthy community design. These exchanges will aid in the development of regulations, provide funding for pilot initiatives and inform present and upcoming planners and public health professionals on how to create healthier communities.