Abstract:
“Keep your vitality. A life without health is like a river without water.” (Maxime Lagacé). Tiel plays an important but often either unknown or unacknowledged part in the region: it functions as the regional centre of health and wellbeing. This role is likely to become only more important in the future: Tiel’s current residents, which consists of a large number of lower educated people, is already relatively vulnerable to health issues but this will become even more true in the coming years as the city’s population continues to age. Therefore, this proposal seeks to increase Tiel’s capability of being the regional centre of health and wellbeing by transforming its public space into a stimulation of public health. Three categories were studied and combined to achieve the result: reducing mental stress, stimulating physical activity, and reducing heat stress. Important findings include the beneficial use of a large urban park, various overlapping and conflicting design guidelines, and allowing areas with conflicting functions to coexist by separating them by buffers. A possible implication of this research is the generation of knowledge on how a city’s public space can be used as a stimulus for a healthy lifestyle.
