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Home  >  Policy   >  Current Projects   >  Healthy Spaces and Places

A National Guide to Designing Places for Healthy Living

Healthy Spaces & Places Training now available

This training is relevant for everyone involved in designing, building and maintaining the built environment and in delivering quality of life outcomes for communities. It has been developed specifically for Local Government and should be considered an essential component for those Local Government areas that are part of the Healthy Communities Initiative.

More information

Click here to visit the Healthy Spaces and Places website

Healthy Spaces and Places is a national guide for planning, designing and

creating sustainable communities that encourage healthy living. It is a unique collaboration between the Australian Local Government Association, National Heart Foundation of Australia and the Planning Institute of Australia. It was funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.

Healthy Spaces and Places aims to:

  • encourage the development of built environments that provide opportunities for physical activity and other health-related activities
  • continue to improve health outcomes for all Australians through better-designed built environments
  • raise awareness of the relationship between physical activity and the built environment, and
  • contribute to a national policy setting.

Healthy Spaces and Places is largely web-based at The Healthy Spaces and Places website and 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.

An overview document is also available (Healthy Spaces and Places: A national guide to designing places for healthy living: An overview).

The website is the primary resource and 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

Healthy Spaces and Places is for everyone who can make a difference to the overall health and wellbeing of Australians: planning and design professionals, health professionals, the property development industry, governments and the community.

Links to further information

Healthy Spaces and Places Workshop Presentations

Planning Healthy Communities

PIA Victoria is working closely with Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) to build links between planning and health promotion. This project has national relevance to planners. The objectives of the project are to:

  • increase the number of planners aware of and advocating for the integration of planning and health
  • increase the capacity of planners to influence local urban design so that health is "planned in " rather than "planned out"
  • gather evidence of good planning for health and well being, including literature and case studies, collated and disseminated to planners.
  • identify key planing and design elements that will lead to greater health and social benefits for the community.

Further information on this project