Active Ageing Environments

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"A decent home, a job and friends are more important to good health than the NHS." (Duncan Selbie, Chief Executive, Public Health England)Physical activity has been engineered out of our lives; mechanization, automation and digitization have left us sedentary, indoors and tied to our screens. Physical inactivity adversely effects health, mental wellbeing and quality of life at all ages and across all sectors of society. As our population ages the cumulative effects of this lack of physical activity, movement and connection with the outdoors is severely detrimental to average healthy life expectancy. Midlife and older adults represent the most inactive portion of the population. If people have appropriate information, opportunities and tools at the right time they have higher levels of activation, tend to experience better health and engage in healthier behaviours. The built environment impacts our health and wellbeing as it affords opportunities to be physically active in the spaces between and around buildings. Good design creates physical activity opportunities through access to green spaces, walking and cycling connections and links to community facilities.The national housing shortage will be met by developers driven by profit, delivering thousands of houses in the same mould. We intend to show that the return on investment in better design, will increase their profits while also improving health. By creating better, more desirable places to live, the value of land and houses increases. By embedding opportunities for physical activity at the design stage, creating active aging environments, communities grow and grow healthier.