At the end of September an important new book entitled “Urban Blue Spaces: planning and design for water, health and well-being” was published by Routledge. The book is a major output of the EU-funded Horizon2020 research project BlueHealth. It deals with evidence-based design for waterside landscape planning and design – including a review of the science, a set of freely available tools and a review of a number of inspiring projects from a range of blue space types. Editors and contributors come from a number of countries and organisations, with the lead editing and much of the content being written and illustrated by researchers from the Estonian University of Life Sciences, the lead editor being Professor Simon Bell, Past President of ECLAS. The book is fully Open Access so freely available to everyone at this link:
https://www.routledge.com/Urban-Blue-Spaces-Planning-and-Design-for-Water-Health-and-Well-Being/Bell-Fleming-Grellier-Kuhlmann-Nieuwenhuijsen-White/p/book/9780367173180
There are also two associated websites: the BlueHealth Toolbox and the BlueProfiles (both accessible at https://bluehealth.tools/ which provide more details of the tools presented in the book and a supplementary range of reviewed inspirational projects from around the world.
More information on the BlueHealth project can be found here: https://bluehealth2020.eu/
Lead editor of the book, Professor Simon Bell of the Chair of landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences said: “This book is the culmination of 5 years of research and is a major addition to publications which raise the awareness of blue spaces for health and well-being in urban areas. It enables planners and designers as well as local communities, to understand the benefits, to acquire evidence at a project site level and to plan and design projects to be of the best quality. The fact the we were able to fund the full Open Access for the book means that the widest possible audience can access it”
