Planning and designing healthy new communities: Selandra Rise Research Summary

Selandra Rise is a new housing development located in Melbourne's south-east growth corridor, 52km from the Melbourne CBD, where residents have bought land and built new houses over a period of several years. This research project aimed to discover how design and planning of a new residential community could improve the health and wellbeing of residents. In partnership with Stockland, the Metropolitan Planning Authority, the City of Casey, the Planning Institute of Australia (Vic) and VicHealth, a key focus of the research was the development of recommendations to inform design and planning of future residential communities. The research was guided by the social determinants of health1 directly related to housing and neighbourhood. These are: physical activity, social inclusion, mental health, childhood health, food accessibility and safety. It follows on from research showing that neighbourhood design can contribute to a sense of place and to the health and wellbeing of residents (Frumkin 2003; Giles-Corti et al. 2005).