ABSTRACT
Planning and public health are siblings, born of the same concerns. The history of town planning, from the era of Hippocrates and Hippodamus in classical Greece to the present, is full of examples of towns designed with the well-being and health of residents a primary concern.1 Modern planning emerged in the late nineteenth century largely in reaction to the unsanitary, overcrowded and inhumane conditions of industrial cities. It was recognised then, and it is increasingly recognised now, that there is an umbilical link between environmental conditions and human health. This link is not only a matter of the direct physical impacts – for example of foul air or contaminated water – but also of indirect social and behavioural effects, on the exercise we take, the people we meet, on equity of access to essential services and to nature.
