Elizabeth J Burton

University of Warwick · School of Engineering

The purpose of this research was to investigate the role of outdoor housing environment (OHE), including front and back gardens, yards, courtyards, patios and balconies, in older people’s well-being. Descriptions of their OHEs were collected from 2558 individuals living in 526 distinct housing developments using a postal questionnaire. A large rang...

Objective: Research on inpatient psychiatric care has paid little attention to the built environment of psychiatric wards. This study described the built environment in a sample of inpatient psychiatric wards in England and investigated relationships between staff satisfaction with the built environment of the ward and objective design features of...

As life expectancy has increased in the last few decades, so has interest in how the built environment – housing, hospitals, streets and neighbourhoods – might help us to address some of the big challenges.1,2 On the whole, policy in this area is progressing ahead of the research, which is limited and fragmented.

This paper presents findings from research exploring ways in which the design of the outdoor environment affects the ability of older people with dementia to understand and navigate their local urban neighbourhoods. The paper establishes the importance of legibility for older people with dementia in using and enjoying their local neighbourhoods. It...

Significant relationships between built environment and wellbeing variables. This table shows significant relationships between built environment and wellbeing variables.

Neighbourhood Design Characteristics Checklist (NeDeCC). Items and categorical responses included in the NeDeCC instrument.

There is renewed interest in the role of the built environment in public health. Relatively little research to date investigates its impact on healthy ageing. Ageing in place has been adopted as a key strategy for coping with the challenges of longevity. What is needed is a better understanding of how individual characteristics of older people's re...

This paper summarises research funded by the EPSRC EQUAL programme from 2000 to 2003 to examine how neighbourhoods could be made dementia-friendly. Design for dementia generally focuses on the internal environment of dementia care homes and facilities, but most people with dementia live at home. Unless they are able to use their local neighbourhood...

The design and maintenance of the physical external environment facilitate people's ability to get out and about. In particular, effective design of the neighbourhood street can support older people's independence (such as being able to go shopping) and increase social interaction and community engagement, reducing reliance on care in the home. Int...

Design for dementia has, to date, focused on the internal, generally institutional environment of care homes and dementia care facilities. Yet the majority of older people with dementia live at home, around one third of these on their own. Unless outdoor environments are designed to help older people with dementia continue to use their local neighb...

This is the first book to address the design needs of older people in the outdoor environment. It provides information on design principles essential to built environment professionals who want to provide for all users of urban space and who wish to achieve sustainability in their designs. Part one examines the changing experiences of people in the...

Empirical research in the built environment field is hampered by a lack of reliable measurement tools. The authors argue that there is a need for measures of built form that are objective, descriptive, comprehensive, reliable, practical, and address all environmental scales. They outline the development of an instrument to measure physical characte...

This paper presents findings from research exploring ways in which the design of the outdoor environment affects the ability of older people with dementia to understand and navigate their local urban neighbourhoods. The paper establishes the importance of legibility for older people with dementia in using and enjoying their local neighbourhoods. It...

Design guidelines for dementia care homes have, in recent years, acknowledged the important role the internal environment plays in influencing the functional capabilities and emotional well-being of people with dementia. However, although the majority of people with dementia live in the community, similar guidance does not exist in relation to the...

The social model of disability de-medicalises disability and politicises it as an issue of universal rights. However, the rights of people with dementia have been less strongly advocated than those of people with physical disabilities. This is particularly the case with environmental planning and design. The needs of people with dementia are now in...

BACKGROUND; Little is known about the effects of the physical environment on individual health. The present study tested the hypothesis that the prevalence of depression is associated with independently rated measures of the built environment, after adjusting for individuals' socio-economic status and the internal characteristics of their dwellings...

Although promotion of the compact city is now enshrined in land-use planning policy in many countries, including the United Kingdom, there is little evidence to support the many claims in its favour. In seeking to provide empirical data to advance the debate, one of the key problems researchers face is the task of measuring urban compactness. Resea...

There are few reliable measures of place with which to study the effects of socio-economic context on health. We report on the development and inter-rater reliability of a 27-item observer-rated built environment site survey checklist (BESSC). Across eleven ‘housing areas’ (defined as areas of homogeneity in housing form) and two raters, kappa coef...