IFLA Working Programme 17 - Age-Friendly Communities and Landscapes

Goal: Promote the integration of health and wellbeing considerations in urban landscape design, fostering active living, social interaction, and access to nature.

Impact: Create healthier, more livable, and equitable urban environments that enhance the well-being of people.

Working Programme Members

Director - Simon Bell

Professor Simon Bell PhD is a forester-turned-landscape architect. He worked for 20 years for the UK Forestry Commission as a landscape architect from 1979 to 1999 and in 2000 joined Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) and co-founded the OPENspace Research Centre which is now within the University of Edinburgh. He has been professor of landscape architecture at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, in Tartu, Estonia since 2009. He is interested in aspects of the wider landscape, such as forests, rural and wild landscapes, urban gardening, blue spaces as well as the peri-urban zone. This includes planning and design aspects, forest landscape aesthetics, urban forestry, outdoor recreation and the health benefits of exposure to green and blue environments. Recent projects include a large EU Horizon2020 project on blue spaces and their role in health and wellbeing (BlueHealth). Simon co-founded the MSc programme on Landscape and Wellbeing in ECA. Between 2012 and 2018 he served as President of the European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS). He is co-director of the Joint Laboratory of Healthy Space,  set up between the University of Edinburgh and Beijing Institute of Technology, China.

Co-director - Gayle Souter-Brown

Gayle Souter-Brown is recognized for expertise in planning and design for health and well-being, with over 25 years' experience in international landscape and urban design. Using landscape as a cost effective intervention, she began her career with the Department of Conservation, New Zealand, specialising in evidence based environmental design, stakeholder engagement, sustainable design for health, education, housing, play and care environments. In 2006, she founded Greenstone Design UK Ltd, a global salutogenic design consultancy.

Other members of the Working Programme

Agnieska Olszewska-Guizzo

Basma Khaled

Dmitra Gregoriou

Jared Thorp

Maryam Naghibi

Zainul Fadli Zaini