Urban Wellness Infrastructure Builds the Future of Cities

*This piece has been adapted from Robert Hammond and Omar Toro Vaca's contribution to the Global Wellness Summit's The Future of Wellness 2023 Annual Trend Report titled 'Wellness + Cities: Urban Wellness Infrastructure Just Might Save Cities'.

The challenges arise from all sides: The widespread decline in people’s health and the overall decrease in healthcare quality have exacerbated an economic crisis that is most sharply seen in cities. However, some cities and businesses have discovered a solution: Building wellness into the very infrastructure of urban centres.

We define “urban wellness infrastructure” as the melding of capital improvements and business opportunities and programs that address social, mental, and physical health. To succeed, cities need to create wellbeing on a scale greater than individuals can typically access themselves. Successful economies are now reorienting toward urban wellness infrastructure, building a more resilient and more vibrant vision of what a city can be.

Healthy communities make prosperous cities. Research increasingly shows the strong relationship between the health of a population and the strength of the economy. This has put the importance of building an accessible urban wellness infrastructure that can accelerate cities’ post-pandemic recovery, and create healthier, happier city-dwellers front and center. 

The global wellness sector has seen massive growth in recent years. Wellness represented a $4.4 trillion global business in 2020. The yoga industry is currently valued at $88 billion worldwide and is projected to grow up to $215 billion by 2025. And, mindfulness practices, and the mobile applications designed to support them, had an estimated global market value of $533.2 million in 2022.

At the same time, employees have begun to expect their workplaces not only to accommodate wellness practices but to support them. Crucially, wellness has also seen a shift in appeal from luxury to mass-market.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects decadal growth of 12% for health educators and community health workers, 19% for fitness trainers, and 20% for massage therapists. Moreover, wellness metrics are also increasingly mentioned by sociologists and policy leaders as a measure of societal health in the same breadth as literacy, mortality rates, and GDP.

As we detail below, city planners and other urbanists increasingly consider wellness a key element of city life. Look no further than the American Planning Association, which now advocates and embraces a broad view of wellbeing that encompasses wellness principles like community, belonging, and resilience.

As well as these shifting trends, and attitudes towards, wellbeing, covid has had a lasting impact on our health. . The World Health Organization reports alarming and persistent spikes in rates of anxiety and depression worldwide following the pandemic. Traditional medical care will not be enough in this new world – preventative wellness approaches provide a compelling alternative.

Building wellness infrastructure means thinking about wellbeing on a very large scale, something many urbanists have not done since the end of the era of the public bath house. But now our vision must go far beyond traditional wellness facilities. With a broader focus, a vision of wellness spills out of the spa and into the streets. If your accessible wellness center cannot be reached by public transit, is it really accessible? If your parks and public spaces are made unsafe by crime, do they really serve a wellness purpose?

Urban planning has traditionally been defined by a design-first approach that, by only looking at the built environment, has often led to blind spots regarding many entrenched socio-economic problems.

The idea of the High Line was to bring great architecture and landscape to public spaces. Wellness was always part of the vision of creating a new place to walk, relax, exercise, and experience beauty. However, as the High Line matured, architecture and landscaping alone were not meeting the needs of the communities the park was originally designed to serve. Friends of the High Line, the non-profit group that operates the park, responded by implementing a teen job program, as well as introducing free public programming including cultural events, art, meditation and yoga – of which planted the seeds of ongoing community investments.

The 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington D.C. is a prime example of a new public space project that has learned from some of the High Line’s mistakes. The project is designed by the masterful team of OMA and OLIN, but the most important thing about the project is not the design, it is the equitable development plan that underpins it. The fresh, new way of thinking about infrastructure exemplifies a more holistic planning approach that incorporates wellness into civic assets.

Leading the way in the planning of an urban wellness infrastructure, Singapore is making strides to create new programs and build wellness-oriented physical resources. In 2022, GWI identified one of the trends now driving critical urban planning decisions in the nation-state: post-pandemic wellness tourism is projected to reach US$1.3 trillion by 2025.

“Singapore is well positioned to capture [the growing demand for wellness tourism], as a leading urban wellness haven that prioritizes holistic wellbeing and offers accessible ‘must-do’ experiences to rejuvenate locals and visitors. With more travelers prioritizing wellness, we have developed strategies and initiatives to realize our ambition to be an urban wellness haven,” explains Ong Ling Lee, Executive Director, Sports & Wellness, Singapore Tourism Board. 

Therme Group, a global leader integrating wellbeing with water-based recreation at scale, is the kind of urban wellness infrastructure that operates 365 days a year and serves tourists and locals alike. Attracting up to 8,000 people on a peak holiday—unlike most hospitality-driven offerings such as spas—Therme Group facilities are the closest modern-day amenity to the ancient Roman baths.

As much as offering a get-away day spa and resort, Therme is an urban resource, a vital new gathering place for cities seeking to build a culture of wellness. Knitting Therme into a dense urban area by embedding it in mixed-use developments in some of the world’s most dynamic cities opens new opportunities for extending commercial wellbeing offerings to a broad customer base.

Furthermore, through partnerships and programs that expand its impact, Therme creates social benefits in the surrounding communities they serve. Knitting Therme into a dense urban area by embedding it in mixed-use developments in some of the world’s most dynamic cities opens new opportunities for extending commercial wellbeing offerings to a broad customer base. Furthermore, through partnerships and programs that expand its impact, Therme creates social benefits in the surrounding communities they serve. 

Unfortunately, unequal access to food – and to the cultural richness that comes from celebrating culinary traditions – is common in too many American cities. However, in the District, Jaren Hill Lockridge, Director of the Well at Oxon Run, is using her background in government, paired with pandemic-fueled necessity, to create community around urban agriculture and food distribution, key components of DC Greens’ mission of advancing health equity by building a just and resilient food system.

Such grassroots efforts to put public land to work for a common purpose – in the case of the Well at Oxon Run, a purpose that combines nutrition, cultural heritage, and productive labor – offers a model for how both physical and social components come together to build a thriving community space, which is a critical component of an urban wellness infrastructure.  

The world’s most successful cities benefit from dense networks of public, community-based, private-sector and non-profit organizations. From parks conservancies to business improvement districts to community health centers, strategically deployed public-private partnerships have demonstrated an ability to provide public services at the speed and quality of private enterprise. Leveraging such partnerships is key to unlocking wellness infrastructure at scale.

Monterrey, Mexico’s DistritoTec is a prime example of how a private organization can work with business and government partners to promote broad public wellness goals. Led by Tecnológico de Monterrey, Latin America’s leading private university, DistritoTec re-envisioned the neighborhood surrounding the university campus from the ground up. With the goal of driving safety, walkability, and reversing population decline, Tecnológico de Monterrey assigned a team of staff and faculty and dedicated $200 million to drive the effort.

Having signaled their willingness to invest in their community, the Monterrey City Council and local businesses were eager to join the university, and contributed in kind to infrastructure upgrades, zoning changes for density, 24-hour cultural and recreational programming. Perhaps most impactfully, DistritoTec transitioned the formerly car-dependent community into a walkable environment defined by pocket parks, art installations, and parkways.

The role of the city has been reimagined countless times over the centuries. Cities have served as trading posts, centers of political power, artistic and innovation engines, destinations for religious discovery and educational development, and much more. But to remain vital in the next century, cities must rebuild themselves around the wellness needs of their citizens. The city must become a place not to survive but to thrive. That’s not possible without wellness infrastructure.

Wellness infrastructure will not grow organically. It must be intentionally cultivated by political, community, and business leaders who are willing to do the hard work of grassroots planning, interdisciplinary thinking, partnership building, and designing urban-scale systems. But as our world continues to urbanize, the success of the city is the success of our species. And with our renewed recognition of the inextricable relationship between the health of the cities and the health of city-dwellers, urban wellness infrastructure is no longer a luxury – it is a necessity.

Robert Hammond

President & Chief Strategy Officer, Therme Group US

Robert Hammond is the President and Chief Strategy Officer for Therme Group US. Robert comes to Therme after serving for over two decades as the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the High Line, where he led the transformation of an abandoned elevated railway line in Manhattan into an iconic urban park. A certified Vedic mediation teacher, Robert has served as a consultant or advisor for myriad companies and organizations. 

Omar Toro Vaca

Chief Development Officer

Omar-Toro-Vaca is Chief Development Officer for Therme Group US, leading community integration and placemaking for the company as it expands throughout the United States. A trained architect, Omar has worked at the intersection of design and politics for several decades. Before joining Therme, Omar served as Senior Vice President of Real Estate at Kasirer LLC, leading government and community relations for complex relations of New York City. Before Kasirer, Omar served as Associate Principal at SHoP Architects, where he led architectural development and master planning for major domestic and international projects. He holds Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Pratt Institute, where he subsequently taught interior design, and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Columbia University.