Spiritual Wellness and the Built Environment

Spiritual wellness sits in a blind spot in city-making. We measure traffic counts and hospital beds, yet struggle to name why a stroll under trees soothes us or how a plaza can lift a crowd into awe. Architect and planner Phillip Tabb draws a clear line: wellness is preventative, place-based, and social, while much of today’s investment flows to curative health systems. That gap shapes cities. He distinguishes spirituality from religion not to water it down, but to point toward universal experiences—purpose, meaning, serenity—that people of any faith or none can feel. When we design only for throughput and not for presence, we trade human flourishing for speed. 

Tabb’s path winds through Boulder’s Buddhist milieu, sacred geometry workshops, and decades of biophilic design. Those influences surface in a practical lens on the wellness pillars—physical, mental, emotional, social, environmental, spiritual, and financial. Early wellness models leaned on the individual; newer research highlights the social pillar as a longevity engine. That shift matters for planning: streets that slow cars invite conversation; front porches six to ten feet from sidewalks sustain contact even in a pandemic. Environmental wellness arrives not by sprinkling parks like garnish, but by threading living systems through the urban fabric so rivers, shade, and soil are part of daily routes, not destinations behind guardrails. 

Color offers a vivid case. Though omitted in some biophilic lists, color is integral to nature and mood. Blues and greens can calm; reds and ambers can energize. The same recovery ward may need serenity for rest or stimulation for movement; design should anticipate both. Beyond interiors, public space can toggle awe and tranquility without moving an inch. Siena’s Campo hosts quiet lunches and thunderous horse races, proving a single form can hold multiple emotional states. That duality is a design brief: balance prospects and refuges, vastness and intimacy, light and shadow, so places can meet shifting human needs. 

Transportation looms as a spiritual issue. Car-first patterns isolate us from each other and from nature, turning rivers into obstacles and sidewalks into afterthoughts. Tabb argues for accessibility as the baseline of dignity: if daily needs are a mile-wide walk instead of a six-mile drive, wellness becomes possible. The transect model offers a humane gradient—small nucleated villages at the rural edge, scaling to mixed-use neighborhoods and a connected core—with transit as the connective tissue. Where that fabric exists, safety and comfort form the base of a Maslow-like ladder that supports higher-order experiences of meaning and belonging. 

Housing confronts wellness with hard economics and habits. Bigger isn’t better if it erodes connection, affordability, or nature. Compact homes, shared amenities, and mixed uses can lift financial and social pillars together. Tabb’s work at Serenbe shows that small lots, front porches, no front lawns, forested backs, and even limited garages can still draw people at every price point. The lesson isn’t to copy a template, but to assemble common components—access, nature, center, edges, walkability, and reduced harm—into a place scaled to climate, culture, and land. Measure success by lived life: do people linger, wave, chat, and feel safe? If design is preventative care, then a spiritually healthy city is one where the proof is in the daily pudding—quiet joy, frequent contact, and paths that honor both awe and rest.

Reprint from the Booked on Planning blog. Listen to the podcast here: https://www.bookedonplanning.com/podcast/episode/7ebd0ad3/spiritual-wellness-and-the-built-environment