S8 EP4: Ross Wissing, Biophilic Benefits

Ross has over 30 years experience in the environment, sustainability and landscape design fields in a range of positions from local community engagement to management of state and national programs focused on creating landscapes that achieve both environmental and human health. 

If you'd like to learn more about the AHDC, please connect with us on our website www.aushdc.org.au or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/aushdc.

Transcript

David Cummins: G'day and welcome to the AHDC podcast series Health Design on the Go.

[00:00:19] I'm your host David Cummins, and today we're speaking to Dr Ross Wissing, who has over 25 years experience in the environment sustainability and landscape design fields in a range of positions from local community engagement to management of state and national programs. Recently, Dr Ross completed his PhD at Deacon University on creating sustainable residential landscapes in Geelong.

[00:00:41] Ross has also recently produced a social prescription paper, which I'm very excited to discuss today as part of our landscape series. 

[00:00:48] Welcome, Dr. Ross. Thank you for your time to be here. 

[00:00:51] Ross Wissing: My pleasure David. 

[00:00:52] David Cummins: For those who do not understand what creating sustainable residential landscapes is, do you mind just explaining a little bit more about your research and exactly how important that is to, not only the community, but to the health of the public.

[00:01:04] What are the principles and advantages of outdoor spaces?

[00:01:07] Well there's many advantages of outdoor spaces in terms of principles, there's three main principles that underpin my research. 

[00:01:15] And in order of importance, the first one is ecological. So looking at ecological processes that create local climates and also local landscape conditions.

[00:01:25] The second one is human factors, that's a range of things from personality traits to attitudes, to individual values as well as social norms. 

[00:01:36] And the third one is the relationship between ecological characteristics and human characteristics, which is the build environment. 

[00:01:43] So those three principles in particular, which operated a pretty high level are what underpinned and influenced my work.

[00:01:51] So understanding them as the main principles, what are those advantages at this point in time? I'm happy to talk about as a public, but obviously as a patient, what are the advantages to the general community knowing that there's more outdoor spaces? 

[00:02:03] Well it's something that, particularly Covid really reinforced and it was emerging a little bit beforehand.

[00:02:09] When people had restrictions on their access we saw that a lot more people were going out and using their public open spaces, but it wasn't just their public open spaces. It's also the importance of backyards and their local streets as well. 

[00:02:23] So what we've seen probably over the last 30 or 40 years is an increase in densification in urban areas and also to some extent a substitution or an increasing substitution of private space with public open space.

[00:02:37] But some of the research that I did in 2017, 2018, with my PhD that was then picked up by a national survey supported by Macquarie University, really looked at differentiating between the sorts of outdoor spaces that people go, what sort of activities they do and how it actually relates to people's health.

[00:02:56] And it's not just from a psychological perspective, but also from a physical perspective and then a relational perspective as well. 

[00:03:03] So just because I'm interested in this, was there actually research done 30, 40 years ago when we were not so urbanised, to talk about the relationship between wellness and outdoor spaces, or is this very, very new research and data that's come around with the reduction of nature and the increase in urbanisation?

[00:03:24] Ross Wissing: So certainly in the 1970s, there was some research that was undertaken in Adelaide by a guy called Ian Heke, which looked at how Adelaide residents used their backyards, what they did and how important it was. 

[00:03:37] It wasn't couched so much in, in terms of environmental aspects or human health, but it's provided a really good baseline for how people used, particularly their backyard backyards in the 1970s.

[00:03:50] But particularly since after World War II, there's been an increased disconnection between urban planning and also public health, whereas probably for the century before that, and certainly in ancient Greek society, but also Aboriginal Australian society, there was always a very strong connection and understanding between the health of people and the health of landscape.

[00:04:13] And so for, as I was saying, probably the 50, 60 years after World War II, there's been a moving away from it and bit more of a siloing approach. But as I was saying before, just before Covid it was starting to happen and then Covid has really emphasised the importance of the integration of human health and environmental health.

[00:04:32] David Cummins: So I'm a property developer and generally speaking, we will see land and we'll see money and we'll see opportunity. 

[00:04:42] Obviously as a landscape specialist you'll see the same three things, but from a different side of the coin, how do we get that balance of creating value for money, but also maintaining the wellness and health of the community through public spaces?

[00:04:56] Ross Wissing: In the first instance, it's really looking at what our eco footprint is, and so Australia's eco footprint for most residents is about four times what our fair share is. So what the ecological capacity of our environment is. 

[00:05:09] And when some research was undertaken by EPA Victoria and it was around about 2005 and 2008, found that low density residential living was actually 25% more sustainable than medium and and high density.

[00:05:24] But the problem that we've had again, really since World War II is that the low density residential landscapes have become a lot more aesthetic in focus, whereas before that time, the backyard in particular and Australian suburbs had a much stronger focus on people growing their own food and meeting their own needs in the backyard.

[00:05:45] So if you're looking at it from an eco footprint perspective and particularly like food's, a really good example, it takes up 30 to 40% of the eco footprint, yet we only need, for the average family, about 150 square meters of land to grow pretty much all of your vegetables and all of your fruit, which is a really significant component of the diet.

[00:06:05] But what we've been seeing is as cities have been growing bigger the transport network hasn't been able to keep up with with the growth of suburbs is that there's a desire to densify and in some ways that makes sense. 

[00:06:18] But then in many ways actually, the more houses that you have per acre obviously, or generally, the more hard surfaces you have. And what that also means is that you then don't have the capacity to grow food. 

[00:06:31] So that was why I was looking at low density residential in my PhD, was to actually say, well, in the first instance, what's a sustainable landscape? As a landscape architect, a lot of it's about spatial metrics.

[00:06:43] So how much of the average Australian block, which is 735 square meters, how much of that would you need to devote to food production? 

[00:06:52] If we were to mitigate urban heat island effect, what percentage of the block would need to be covered under shade so that you avoid things like air conditioning?

[00:07:00] Similarly, what's the size of the roof catchment that you would need to capture all the rainwater and rather than investing in big infrastructure, more dams more pipelines for potable water, how do you capture and how do you treat that on site? 

[00:07:15] And then the benefit of that is that if people are using, rainwater runoff for drinking and for showering and for laundry and for dish washing and all that stuff, it does a couple things. 

[00:07:28] It reduces, as I mentioned before, the requirement to need more dams in an increasingly drying environment, but also it reduces the amount of storm water runoff that goes into our streams. 

[00:07:40] So it's a double benefit. It was really looking at all of those sorts of components to actually provide some metrics around what is the real sustainable option.

[00:07:48] And what I found was that through conscious and considered design and looking at obtaining multiple benefits out, out of the design of the residential landscape that most people could meet most of their basic human needs at home, certainly the majority of their eco footprint. 

[00:08:04] And so part of that was also informed by the reality that when we go in and we clear sites for any development, whether it's residential development, whether it's infrastructure or roads or whatever, things like the erosion impact is thousands of times greater than what normally happens under natural conditions. 

[00:08:25] So it's taking into account all those sorts of factors and saying, well, we could either come in and completely redesign our cities, which would then require a lot more resources and would cause a lot more environmental damage in the short term, or you can work with the existing urban fabric that we've got. 

[00:08:41] Where there's a need for new development, look at better ways of designing particularly medium and high density areas. And people like Rob Adams had some really innovative approaches, a bit over a decade ago in Melbourne that looked at similar sorts of things.

[00:08:54] There's an overwhelming desire over time for people to live in low density residential areas. And so urban areas now, cities as we know them, is really unique and it's opposite to how we've lived for most of our life.

[00:09:08] So, for example when Australia was colonised, about 10% of England lived in cities. It's now 50%, it's now 70%. 

[00:09:17] So it's to work with both ecological and human nature and work with what people want to do and there's also some pretty significant health benefits that come out of that in terms of meeting not just, or addressing, not just psychological and mental health benefits, but as I was mentioning before with food, if people are self-sufficient in their food, that moderate exercise, which generally takes six to eight hours a week also meets their physical health guidelines. 

[00:09:42] But there's also a lack of evidence around that. And that was one of the things that I was trying to do in that research but also probably more so in some of the more recent research that I've been doing.

[00:09:51] David Cummins: You've obviously done a lot of research into the past and the present with the importance of urban dwellings. I know recently, especially in Geelong in Victoria, you've produced a green and social prescriptions paper. 

[00:10:04] My understanding of that is that taken us to the future. So how do you see the future of this space. It sounds very dire, it sounds like we are running out of space, it sounds like we've got to become more self-sufficient and the problem according to me, is only going to continue to increase and get worse if we don't do something about it. 

[00:10:24] So I'm pretty sure your paper highlights that. Do you mind just taking us through that paper a little bit more please?

[00:10:29] The 

[00:10:29] Ross Wissing: picture to some extent is dire. I'm fairly optimistic though, and it was one of the reasons why I was looking at the real motivations that drive sustainable behaviour so, as I mentioned before, I'd worked in environmental education and action programs for over a decade and one of the things that we found was that we could get a lot of rural adult, but we couldn't get urban adult engagement.

[00:10:51] And so it was then looking at, well, why is that? And part of the reason is that people look after their backyards. That takes into account 70% of the landscape. That's where their interest is.

[00:11:03] So what are the motivations for it? And it's largely non environmental sorts of things. It's things like it's cheaper or in the case of food, for example, I like the taste of it.

[00:11:13] I like being able to go out at night and pick what's fresh and use that in my diet. I wanna show my kids and grandkids how to grow it. So it was those motivations rather than the environmental motivations and trying to change environmental values. 

[00:11:26] And so that was the first part of the research. The second part was then saying, well, how do act, how do people actually live in their backyards? And one of the really interesting things that I found was that people are far more sustainable when you go and have a look at their backyards and what we actually give them credit for.

[00:11:40] And so they don't see them as environmental values, but it's really addressing the main barrier, which is decreasing what size for people to go and, and grow food or to capture storm water or to plant trees. So on one hand, I'm really optimistic that there's this innate drive for people to do it.

[00:12:00] So it's how do you work with that? But then it's also dealing with things like legislation and, and policies and making sure that there's a good understanding of what the spatial requirements actually are, and then protecting them. 

[00:12:13] So that's the first aspect, as I was talking about before in terms of the the principles is really looking at, well, how much land do people need? How do you protect that? 

[00:12:24] But then also, and this is where the green prescriptions or social prescriptions come in, different environments will have different benefits for different people and will, and some will actually encourage people to be out in the open space and then others won't. 

[00:12:36] So from the green prescription perspective, there's some of the elements that I'm particularly interested in.

[00:12:42] So what are the features that encourage people where there aren't features? How can you actually design environments so that you're encouraging a preventative approach. 

[00:12:50] Because what we're seeing, over the last 40 or 50 years is a dramatic decrease in the number of people that meet physical health guidelines.

[00:12:59] Part of that's the way that . Society, or urban design has gone in the past 50 years. Part of it's also where people work. So, whereas 50 years ago, 50% of people worked outdoors and moved a lot. 

[00:13:10] Today, a lot more people spend most of their time indoors. They're sitting, so it's, it's all those sorts of things. There are issues outside of what I'm talking about, but one of the biggest barriers from a landscape architectural perspective is places that people just don't feel comfortable in.

[00:13:27] So whether that's from a safety perspective or whether it's from a thermal comfort perspective. So we've seen in Sydney in the past, a few years that the number of hot days is increasing, particularly in the West. So that's one of the big barriers, both for young people and for old people, for using those spaces.

[00:13:44] So how do you increase trees? What are the right trees that you put in? It's good to have shade, but one of the disadvantages with evergreens in urban areas is that they provide shade all the time. 

[00:13:54] So things like deciduous trees are generally better in an urban environment because they give you protection from the sun in the summer, but then also open up the solar access during winter, which means that people are much more comfortable across the year going out. 

[00:14:08] But then there's also, distance to things like public open space and generally if a space is within about 400 meters of where someone lives, then they're more likely to use it, assuming the open space actually has the features that they're interested in. 

[00:14:24] And then generally those open spaces are linked by street scapes. And we've seen obviously with the increase in traffic, again over time that there's a lot more traffic. Traffic generally has become faster, parents are, are less willing to let their kids get out there.

[00:14:39] It's almost a perfect storm of factors, which has led to a scenario where people aren't as active as what they wanted to be or what they historically have been. So how do we redesign the landscape? 

[00:14:49] David Cummins: So noting that a lot of people listening today will be landscape architects, will be architects, certainly we're in the world of health, what would you like to see, and certainly in the next five, 10 years, what would you like to see certainly in the world of health and community to try and help reduce this burden and try and enhance and provide positive outcomes for patients and for the community?

[00:15:10] Ross Wissing: So the first thing, the most critical thing is really getting common understanding within the profession and between the profession.

[00:15:15] And so one of the really important things that came out at the start of this year from the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects is some guidance on green infrastructure. So that's the first thing. 

[00:15:26] The second thing is really looking at things like what the economic costs of action and inaction are, and so unlike architecture because landscape architectures is a less or is a younger profession there hasn't been the research that actually looks at, well, what's the benefit of a green landscape or green infrastructure more broadly, but then also specifically for health.

[00:15:48] And so one of the things that I was working on last year with raw offshore hospital in Sydney was a feasibility study that was looking at things like, well, what's the return on investment? So we know that green design is more costly at the front end but the cost of design is the overall life of a project.

[00:16:06] It's minuscule, it's probably 0.3 of a percent. So part of it's communicating those sorts of things. Part of it's also working out what the true cost is. So I think from a health profession and in New South Wales there's some positive moves towards being carbon neutral by 2035.

[00:16:23] But the reality is that our emissions are projected to triple by 2050, which is when we need to be neutral. So even unpacking those sorts of things, unpacking stuff like what's the projected climate expected to be. What we are looking at is the current climate not what it's projected to be in 2050 and 2070 or 2090. So I think those things are really important. 

[00:16:45] And the other one is really embedding research. Constructing these landscapes in hospital or healthcare setting. How do you design them, and then if we're looking at green prescriptions, which have generally a very low cost in terms of implementation, but then a really high return on investment, how do we provide the objective evidence that is more likely to convince medical practitioners to adopt green prescriptions in Australia. 

[00:17:10] One of the things that we've found, compared to others in New Zealand, and particularly in the UK and then also in Japan, there's a much greater uptake of green prescriptions and social prescriptions. Things like forest bathing, but also bird watching, for example, in Scotland and walking in the UK than what there is in Australia.

[00:17:26] So addressing those considerations at one time will then start to put us in a position where you are actually creating environments that people want to be in. If you're creating environments that people want to be in, then you're much more likely to hit the physical health and the mental health outcomes that we are seeking.

[00:17:43] Particularly if we continue to be a society that is mainly desk-bound rather than out in the field. 

[00:17:49] David Cummins: Yeah, it's really good take home message, especially for all the designers and architects and health planners and property developers out there, green is the way of the future.

[00:17:59] And to actually produce green and save green and be green, I just think it's absolutely paramount, especially for the wellbeing of patients patients and the community so thank you so much for your time to be here. 

[00:18:09] People who have done research like yourself, who is really just putting on the forefront exactly how important it is to have these green spaces, especially considering years ago we didn't actually have this issue, and now it does seem to be a growing concern and certainly people like you who have done your research in Geelong and around Australia, it's certainly, benefiting all of us and challenging us more as thinkers in this world so thank you very much.

[00:18:29] Ross Wissing: My pleasure. David 

[00:18:30] David Cummins: You have been listening to the Australian Health Design Council podcast series, Health Design on the Go. If you'd like to learn more about the AHDC, please connect with us on our website or LinkedIn. 

[00:18:40] Thank you for listening.