Housing: the key infrastructure to achieving health and wellbeing in urban environments

Abstract

Informed by research undertaken by our teams with community partners over the past 25 years primarily in Aotearoa New Zealand, we examine housing as an infrastructure required to support health and wellbeing. The home environment is where people spend most of their time, so we propose that housing is the key infrastructure to enhance and maintain health and wellbeing outcomes in urban environments. Other foundational infrastructures—including energy, food, waste, transport, information communications technology, water and sanitation, green, community, education and health care—equally support and rely on housing infrastructure to shape the places in which an increasing diversity of people and their communities live. We describe how housing infrastructure in neoliberal, market-based housing systems has contributed to inequities in access to high-quality housing and connected health-supporting infrastructures. We share two illustrative vignettes of housing retrofits and urban development from Aotearoa and Sweden to show that when approached in a comprehensive, proactive and inclusive way that prioritizes people and the environment, these infrastructures may yet have untapped potential for improving health and wellbeing.