Health-creating cities treat the visual public realm as infrastructure for wellbeing, not decoration. A decade of research and placing 300+ public art projects has proven this beneficial effect to me many times over. 

A growing body of research shows that what appears on our streets, walls, and public spaces shapes our health, yet despite progress, still works against it. 

A city's visual environment isn't decoration on top of infrastructure. It is infrastructure. It shapes whether people feel safe. It shapes whether they belong. It shapes whether they can breathe. 

Seventy-two bollards stood outside London Bridge station after the attack in June 2017¹, telling everyone who walked past that something terrible had happened here. Network Rail allowed one of our artists, Jennifer Abessira, to wrap every grey bollard in colour. Same steel, same job, but now they carried life instead of fear. The project became half of an academic study with Vishal Kumar, surveying eight hundred passers-by who agreed: They only knew they'd felt tension, anxiety, and fear when it was gone—erased by vibrant colour. 

The Mother Vérité statue challenged our sense of belonging. The public sculpture by Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark represented a post-partum mother, vulnerable yet resilient, intimate yet public. Women viewing the statue realized this aspect of their humanity had been ignored in public spaces and art once they saw it before them. “A city that can accommodate postpartum bodies is, by necessity, better equipped to support other forms of vulnerability, including ageing, disability, illness, and precarity.”²

It is a case of "awareness through absence" in both instances, echoing the Institute for Global Prosperity's³ work on health-creating cities. Health is the presence of conditions that let people recover, connect, and thrive. The visual public realm is a determinant of health, as real as clean air or green space. Every billboard, bollard, and blank wall is a choice about what type of health we are facilitating. 

Walk down any high street and you're targeted as a consumer, feeding low-grade stress. The right public art interrupts that: No one is trying to extract anything from you. That builds a sense of safety and belonging. 

But did all evidence keep pointing that way? Our survey asked, “Is public art is core to the life and demand of citizens?” It also asked what they'd pay. “60% of our sample audience were willing to pay at least £5 for the implementation of more public art in their local area, with 84% willing to pay at least £2, and 84% of our sample said regular public art initiatives would increase their wellbeing.”⁴

Chronic anxiety and stress—like wellbeing and connectedness—are shaped by our visual environment. A health-creating city treats it as infrastructure for wellbeing, not an afterthought. The evidence keeps pointing the same way. 

What remains is scaling this effort to all cities and neighbourhoods. “By placing community voices at the heart of decision-making – and fostering collaboration among artists, local authorities, cultural agencies, businesses, schools, and civil society – cities can co-create visual landscapes that celebrate shared values, foster belonging, and tell  authentic stories of their people. Such partnerships lay the groundwork for urban environments that are more inclusive, cohesive, and resilient. [...] This shift opens space for creative, healthy, and socially cohesive content that celebrates local places. It signals a move from corporate promotion to collective expression – a reinvestment in the visual culture of care, identity, and connection.”⁵

¹ A terrorist vehicle‑ramming and knife attack, deliberately attacking pedestrians, on 3 June 2017. The bollards were a post‑attack security upgrade.
² Mother Vérité: Postpartum Monumentality in the Visual Public Realm, Marine Tanguy and Holly Norman, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publications/2026/apr/mother-verite-postpartum-monumentality-visual-public-realm
³ https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/global-prosperity
⁴ “Measuring the extent to which Londoners are willing to pay for public art in their city,”
Marine Tanguy and Vishal Kumar. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0040162518318249
⁵ “Harnessing the visual public realm for community prosperity,” Marine Tanguy and Holly Norman, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/publications/2025/jun/harnessing-visual-public-realm-community-prosperity