Healthy Spaces and Places is a national guide for planning, designing and creating sustainable communities that encourage healthy living.

Foremost it is for planners, as they can help tackle some of Australia’s major preventable health issues by planning places where it is easier and more desirable for more Australians to be active – walking, cycling and using public transport – every day.

But it’s also for everyone who can make a difference to the overall health and wellbeing of Australians – design professionals, health professionals, the property development industry, governments and the community.

Healthy Spaces and Places supports and complements planning and design initiatives throughout Australia.  It is a single source of easy-to-find, practical information from experts in health, planning, urban design, community safety and transport planning.

This website includes:

• design principles that are the foundation stones of healthier more active communities
  
• different development types where these principles can be applied
  
• information about how to make planning for healthier communities happen
  
• Australian case studies that show what is achievable and which have potentially wider application, and
  
• links to the health and planning research and resources that support planning for active living.
  

Planning for healthier outcomes can be applied to all parts of Australia. It is just as applicable in metropolitan areas as it is in regional cities, towns, villages and remote communities.

For an overview, you may wish to download Healthy Spaces and Places: a national guide to designing places for healthy living.

The material provided within Healthy Spaces and Places focuses on how to create environments that support physical activity but does not provide in depth information on nutrition, food security and noise and air pollution.

The material provided on this website can be used freely but please acknowledge Healthy Spaces and Places as the source.

This resource was developed by a collaborative team comprising the Australian Local Government Association, the National Heart Foundation of Australia and the Planning Institute of Australia and funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.

For more information about the people involved in the project please see Acknowledgements.