About This Guide
Where this came from
I didn’t set out to write a guide about cities and public health.
I went to Copenhagen on a trip and noticed something I couldn’t stop thinking about. People were moving on bikes, on foot, through parks, along waterfronts that existed specifically for being near. Not because they’d scheduled a workout or downloaded a fitness app. The infrastructure was built for it. The city had decided, through thousands of small design decisions made over decades, that movement was a normal part of daily life rather than a special effort.
Then I went to Norway. Same observation, different scale. Healthy behavior wasn’t aspirational there. It was structural. The trails connected. The food environments were different. The streets felt safe at night. And the buildings, the ones I was studying for green building certification, were built to standards that addressed sleep and air quality and daylight in ways that American construction codes hadn’t caught up to.
I came home and looked at the city I live in with fresh eyes. Same chronic disease statistics as everywhere else in America. Same sedentary patterns. Same food deserts in the zip codes ten minutes from where I stood. The knowledge of what produces health was not the problem. The built environment was the problem. That’s where this guide comes from.
My background
My professional foundation is in technology delivery, business analysis, and product operations — 15+ years of translating complex systems into clear documentation, coordinating cross-functional teams, and turning technical information into decisions that non-technical people can act on.
Over time that systems-oriented background evolved into a deeper interest in the built environment: specifically the way architecture, planning, sustainability standards, and building performance shape human health in ways most people never consciously register.
I hold credentials in LEED, Fitwel, and BREEAM Foundations – not as compliance checkboxes, but because I wanted to understand the actual standards that translate public health research into design requirements. The certification frameworks are the mechanism. The built environment is the intervention. The health outcomes are what this guide is about.
What I bring to this subject is not the training of an architect or an urban planner. It is the discipline of someone who has spent a career making complex systems legible – taking something technically rigorous and presenting it in a form the right audience can actually use. That is what this guide attempts to do with the research on built environment and health.
What this guide is
Healthy City by Design is a practitioner’s guide to the intersection of the built environment and human health.
It is organized around six pillars – Movement, Nutrition, Mental Health, Sleep, Self-Care, and Prevention, each representing a discrete domain of health that the built environment can directly influence. Each pillar has its own evidence base, its own design levers, and its own certification framework connections across LEED, WELL, Fitwel, SITES, and BREEAM.
Sleep is the pillar that distinguishes this guide from most frameworks in the field. It is not a sub-category of mental health. Its design interventions – acoustic insulation, dark sky lighting, thermal mass, circadian lighting systems, are specific, measurable, and largely ignored in standard practice. Cities are systematically disrupting sleep through decisions made with no awareness of the health implications. This guide names that problem and addresses it directly.
What this guide is not
It is not a research paper. The citations are there to provide confidence, not to be exhaustive.
It is not a certification manual. The framework references are practical handles, not substitutes for the actual standards.
It is not a policy agenda. The design strategies are actionable at the project level, not contingent on systemic political change.
It is a synthesis, a framework that connects evidence across disciplines, maps it to the certification standards that practitioners actually use, and presents it at a level of specificity that makes it useful in a real project conversation.
Who it’s for
Urban planners and city staff who decide where parks go, how streets are designed, and which land uses get approved where.
Architects and landscape architects who design the buildings and outdoor spaces that determine how people move, rest, eat, and sleep.
Building owners, developers, and real estate professionals who set performance standards and want to understand what health certification actually returns on investment.
Sustainability consultants and green building professionals working across LEED, WELL, Fitwel, SITES, and BREEAM who need a unified health framework to guide certification strategy across a diverse client portfolio.
International AEC firms, including European and Nordic companies operating across markets who need a practitioner fluent in both the US certification landscape and the public health evidence base that drives sustainable design policy globally.
And anyone who has looked at a city, their own or someone else’s, and wondered why health is so hard for so many people in a place that is, theoretically, designed for human life.
A note regarding this side project
Healthy City by Design is not a product. It is not a service. It is personal research made public – a body of work I built to develop genuine depth in a field I am moving into, and to demonstrate that depth in a form more credible than a credential list.
The guide is part inspiration archive, part research synthesis, part ongoing exploration of how the built environment either supports or undermines human health at scale. It sits alongside the Sustainable Campus Playbook as a companion piece, the campus guide applies the same framework to the specific context of educational institutions and their communications challenges.
Both projects follow the same logic: I learn by building something substantial enough to be genuinely useful to someone other than me. If this guide is useful to you, as a reference, as a framework, as a starting point for a conversation with a client or a colleague, that is the best possible outcome.
Connect
I write about the built environment, green building certification, and the intersection of design and human health. The best place to follow that work is LinkedIn.
Healthy City by Design 