Published in 2015, the ULI report Building Healthy Places Toolkit: Strategies for Enhancing Health in the Built Environment has served as an enduring resource for ULI members and others seeking to build healthy and thriving places.
Ten years ago, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) released the Building Healthy Places Toolkit: Strategies for Enhancing Health in the Built Environment report. The Toolkit, developed by ULI in partnership with the Center for Active Design, offered 21 practical and tactical evidence-based strategies and recommendations that real estate leaders can employ to improve the health outcomes of residents and building users.
The Toolkit’s clear recommendations, brief project descriptions, and insights from members filled a gap in the guidance that was available at the time to developers and designers about how to build healthier places. Organized into three sections—physical activity, healthful food and drinking water, and healthy environment and social well-being—the Toolkit has proven to be an enduring, valuable ULI resource for developers, architects, planners, community practitioners, policymakers, and others aiming to create more livable, vibrant, and health-conscious spaces that benefit all communities.
Since the launch of Building Healthy Places a decade ago, the real estate sector has increasingly recognized health and well-being as essential to both value creation and risk management.
About the Toolkit and healthy places
The Toolkit provides strategies and recommendations to foster healthier environments through transit-oriented development, walkable infrastructure to encourage physical activity, inclusive spaces that support social well-being, improved buildings designed to enhance resident health, among other benefits. Each of the 21 recommendations in the Toolkit is complemented by a list of strategies, with every suggested action grounded in science and evidence.
For example, the section on physical activity includes recommendations spanning “design well-connected street networks at the human scale” to “provide infrastructure to support biking and walking,” with each strategy accompanied by additional recommendations, project examples, and insights from key leaders. The suite of report materials includes a pullout poster, interactive website, illustrative schematics, and the like.
The Toolkit was one of the seminal early publications of ULI’s Building Healthy Places Initiative, which is now the Healthy Places Program and a part of the ULI Lewis Center for Sustainability in Real Estate.
We now know that developers can be more effective in achieving public health than the doctors in white coats.
The Building Healthy Places Initiative grew out of increased interest among ULI members and leaders in the connection between real estate and health outcomes, and was launched by ULI’s global board of directors in 2013. Key champions included Peter Rummell, principal of Rummell Company and ULI Governing Trustee; and Lynn Thurber, board chair, JLL Income Property Trust, and ULI Governing Trustee.
Informing members and shaping real estate developments
At the time of the publication of the Toolkit in 2015, healthy building certification systems such as WELL and Fitwel were still in their early days. “There was limited guidance on specific actions that real estate leaders should take,” said Rachel MacCleery, who led the Healthy Places program for many years and now serves as the executive director for the Lewis Center.
MacCleery explained that, although it was generally understood that real estate played a role in creating healthy places, specific and actionable guidance for real estate leaders was scarce. The Toolkit was aimed at filling this gap.
“I have used the BHP toolkit as a source of inspiration, reference, and guidance for my practice as a commercial real estate developer in our pursuit of developing communities with a focus on health and wellness.
ULI members point to how recommendations in the Toolkit helped shape the real estate projects that they are leading.
I have used the Building Healthy Places Toolkit over the past ten years to guide our projects and ensure that they are supporting the creation of healthier communities. It’s an indispensable resource.
One early adopter of the Toolkit’s recommendations is Leroy Moore, senior vice president of the Tampa Housing Authority, ULI Global Governing Trustee, and ULI Health Mentor. Committed to promoting awareness and fostering healthy projects, Moore used the Toolkit as a reference when working on two major projects that have helped to transform Tampa’s downtown, the Encore District Redevelopment and the more recent West River Redevelopment. Moore frequently shares ULI reports on health and equity, including the Toolkit and 2022’s 10 Principles for Embedding Racial Equity in Real Estate Development, with his colleagues.
Rives Taylor, a member of the ULI Houston Building Healthy Places Committee and the ULI Sustainable Development Council, noted ways that the schematics helped to illustrate how the 21 recommendations might be applied in a variety of real estate types and sectors. He uses it with his students at the University of Houston and Rice Universities’ schools of architecture in thinking about urban planning.
The Building Healthy Places Toolkit played a pivotal role in shaping the vision and planning of Park Eight Place (Houston, Texas), a 70-acre (28 ha) mixed-use urban village designed to promote healthier living,” said Lee Wong, co-general manager for the project and managing director at Garden Capital Partners. The community has earned Houston’s first Walkable Places designation for a new development, recognizing its commitment to walkability and well-being.
Praised for its clear, concise, and accessible content—enhanced by its graphics, structure, and examples—the Toolkit remains relevant today.
A trusted resource
To mark the 10th anniversary of the Toolkit, ULI reached out to members and partners to learn how they have used the resource over the years.
Brian Levitt, CEO and cofounder of NAVA Real Estate Development, is a longtime ULI member, accomplished real estate developer, and cofounder of the Colorado Building Healthy Places committee. Levitt said that the Toolkit “really opened my mind to all the possibilities” for promoting health in his projects. He credited the Toolkit with deepening his understanding of how health and wellness can be integrated into building design; how the best practices have been applied and challenges solved by other teams with similar project types; the importance of social inclusivity and accessibility; and opportunities to build connections and create social infrastructure inside and outside of buildings, so that they can be a place for everyone.
Certain [Toolkit] elements, like the addition of prominent stairs and stair prompts in new buildings, have now become commonplace and widely adopted.
“I used the Toolkit to expand my perspective of a community, going beyond my immediate reflections and being mindful of multiple aspects of sustainability.” —Survey respondent
Mike Divney, an engineer and planner who has been an active member of ULI Westchester/Fairfield, used the Toolkit in community conversations to inform the development of The City of White Plains Comprehensive Plan in “subtle and important ways.” Pete Fritz referred to the Toolkit when writing a chapter on planning for public health in Indiana’s American Planning Association Citizens Planners Guide. This effort was part of the Planning4Health grant, the first nationwide program linking public health and planning practice.
The Toolkit has made its mark globally, as well. Mark Drane, director of Urban Habitats in the United Kingdom and currently part of the eighth ULI Health Leaders Network cohort, originally learned about the toolkit in 2016, after someone handed him a hard copy during a roundtable on cross-sector approaches to creating healthy cities at the House of Lords, the upper house of the UK Parliament. He has since used it regularly when working with clients, practitioners, and students.
Several people mentioned keeping a hard copy of the report at hand for easy reference and sharing with others. Toolkit users said that it was helpful in a variety of ways, including:
- Serving as a guiding framework for development projects
- Raising awareness and broadening perspectives on creating healthy places
- Launching conversations and being an entry point for consideration in mixed-used development and real estate projects
- Serving as a resource for coaching and educating practitioners and students
- Informing development of a separate resource, the Social Equity Toolkit, and as a reminder to consider all the impacts of projects on communities
- Serving as a resource for public speaking engagements to inform/educate active transportation advocates and community members
- Being used in graduate-level education, including in an urban planning course for Smart Growth, a Placemaking and Place Management course, and a planning studio course
“[The Toolkit] serves as a background framework and good reminder about the intersections between physical, social, and environmental health, in all of my work. We used it and then jumped off from it into the ULI Healthy Corridors work in the environmental justice community of Pacoima, in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
—Melani Smith, director of regional development, Gateway Cities Council of Governments
“The toolkit is an early reference that I found which led me to do a PhD in healthy urbanism and set up a practice in this field.—Survey respondent
“Over the past ten years, the industry has navigated major challenges—from the Covid-19 pandemic to the climate crisis—by prioritizing indoor environments, resilience, and resource efficiency. As a sector committed to maximizing returns by responding to consumer demand, integrating health-focused strategies has proven to be a powerful differentiator, ensuring assets stand out and succeed in an evolving market.”
—Joanna Frank, president and CEO of the Center for Active Design
Showcasing innovative approaches
The Toolkit features multiple development projects that embody an intentional and systematic approach to health, including Mariposa in Denver, Colorado. Mariposa is a mixed-income, transit-oriented housing development with nearly 900 units. It was developed by the Denver Housing Authority, which worked closely with a range of partners, including the design firm Mithun, Enterprise Community Partners, a Community Advisory Council, and Mariposa residents.
From the start, Mariposa integrated health into all aspects of planning and property management, and it measured impacts via the Mariposa Healthy Living Report Card. Two years after the development’s completion, a 2019 study showed improvements in health indicators such as increased incomes, reduced smoking rates, and self-reported improvements in overall health.
The Toolkit will be a central focus of the Lewis Center Sustainability Forum, which will be held in Denver on Monday, May 12, 2025, ahead of the ULI Spring Meeting. Forum participants will also learn about Mariposa and tour it. Registration for the forum is via the Spring Meeting website at this link.
Three new Toolkit-related resources—on strategies for mitigating noise pollution, enhancing social connection, and improving indoor air quality—will be shared at the Forum and beyond. These resources, and the celebration of the Toolkit’s 10th year, reaffirm ULI’s commitment to promoting approaches to real estate development that improve individual and public health and that create enduring real estate value.
To learn more:
- To explore and download the document, go to Building Healthy Toolkit interactive website
- Look out for new content on additional Toolkit strategies coming this May
- Register here for the Randall Lewis Sustainability Forum on May 12, 2025 before the ULI Spring Meeting in Denver.
