Planning healthy weight environments
Helen Pennington MSc
(University of Brighton, School of Architecture and Design)
Full entry title
Pennington, H. (2020) ‘Planning healthy weight environments’, Dissertation submitted for MSc Town Planning degree, University of Brighton.
Research description
The research explored whether planning policies, proposals and decisions in Brighton & Hove address obesity, through critical evaluation against healthy-weight principles. Spatial analysis was used to create a healthy-weight map, identifying wards containing potentially obesogenic environments. The local policy framework was found to comprehensively addresses healthy-weight principles. Whilst this was not reflected in all proposals, there was evidence of their consideration during the decision-making process. Obesogenic factors were found distributed throughout the city and socio-economic factors were identified as having a greater influence on obesity than environmental factors in wards with high or low deprivation.