Yhe International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) has opened registration for the WELL Community Standard pilot, a companion to the pioneering WELL Building Standard.
Grounded in evidence-based research and developed through consultation with leading physicians, scientists and public health professionals, as well as city planners, engineers and architects, the WELL Community Standard is a district-scale rating system centered exclusively on human health and wellness.
The WELL Community Standard builds on the principles of the WELL Building Standard, a performance-based system for measuring, certifying and monitoring features of buildings that impact the human experience. It aims to set a new precedent for planning, building and development by providing an understanding of how communities can employ actionable strategies and interventions to support the health and well-being of their residents across all aspects of community life.
“The WELL Community Standard is an important next step in what I like to call the ‘second wave of sustainability,’ whereby the environments we construct actively promote human health and wellness,” said IWBI Chairman and CEO Rick Fedrizzi.
“We are excited to unveil this program and believe that with its tremendous reach, the WELL Community Standard has a revolutionary capacity to truly enhance people’s health and quality of life on the widest scale to date.”
Building off existing WELL programs and incorporating features specific to urban scale developments, the WELL Community Standard focuses on 10 concepts that impact human health and wellness: Air, Water, Nourishment, Light, Fitness, Temperature, Sound, Materials, Mind and Community.
The standard benefitted from expertise provided by several notable community-level projects, including Water Street Tampa in Tampa, Fla., which inspired the creation of the standard in September 2015 when Strategic Property Partners, LLC (SPP), the developer of Water Street Tampa, joined President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Water Street Tampa was the first adopter of WELL’s approach for a community founded on health and wellness as part of its core development principles.
Located in the heart of downtown Tampa, Water Street Tampa intends to revitalize the surrounding area and create an urban, mixed-use waterfront district consisting of over nine million square feet of new commercial, residential, hospitality, cultural, entertainment, education and retail uses, totaling approximately $3 billion in private investment.
