Well-being by Design. A purpose-driven design practice
Antonio Gomez-Palacio

Key Takeaways

• • We shape our environments and they, in turn, shape our behaviours, health, and social systems.
  • Five‑Stage Virtuous Cycle for Impact:
    
    • People with a shared purpose
    • Ideas that reframe challenges as opportunities
    • Projects to prototype and learn
    • Capabilities to institutionalize methods
    • Leadership to share and scale insights
  • Only 4% of public spending targets environmental and behavioural drivers of health, despite those factors driving 60% of outcomes.
  • Design is not neutral. Environments can either enable or hinder behaviours that support health and well-being.

Summary

1. 1. The Anthropocene marks an era where cities drive planetary change and suffer its consequences (sea‑level rise, migration shifts).
   2. 60% of premature deaths are shaped by behaviour and surroundings, yet public investments still focus overwhelmingly on reactive healthcare rather than proactive, environment-based prevention.
   3. Instead of viewing social and ecological responsibility as a burden to business, it should be embraced as the value proposition of modern enterprises.
   4. Five Drivers for Systemic Change in the Built Environment:
      
      • Build a constituency of purpose‑driven people: professionals, clients, communities, and stakeholders who care deeply about impact.
      • Generate innovative ideas across disciplines: encourage radical innovation, and frame social/environmental challenges as design opportunities.
      • Projects: embed these ideas in real-world prototypes and retrofits. Think small-scale but high-impact interventions.
      • Develop capabilities: Institutionalize what you learn; build playbooks, toolkits, and methodologies that others can adopt.
      • Cultivate leadership that openly shares results and scales impact: systems change only happens through open-source mindsets and intentional storytelling.
   5. Incremental Positive change
      
      • Big World Problems: Issues like climate change, social equity, mental health, cultural alienation, etc., seem daunting to citizens/individuals as one thinks they alone won’t be able to tackle it or change it. However, individual day-to-day impacts do have a huge impact on that environment.
      • Upfront investment in well‑being yields downstream savings in healthcare, social services, and disaster recovery.

How can Cities apply these learnings?

1. 1. Embed Health in Planning: 
      
      • Treat streets, parks, and buildings as preventive health infrastructure.
      • Map health outcomes to environmental factors like green space access, air quality, or active transit availability.
      • Make Health Impact Assessments (HIAs) mandatory for major developments and infrastructure projects.
   2. Encourage or require B Corp or equivalent certifications for local firms and developers.

Suggested readings

1. 1. Schroeder, S. A. (2007). We can do better — Improving the health of the American people. *New England Journal of Medicine, 357*(12), 1221-1228. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa073350 
   2. Good is the New Cool: How to Market Like You Give a Damn – Book by Afdhel Aziz and Bobby Jones.