Charles blasts 'sick cities'
Prince Charles launched an attack on modern city living today.
He blamed poorly designed offices, "sick building syndrome" and too much traffic for a host of health and social problems.
The Prince, who has criticised architects and intensive farming in the past, said a rise in allergies, obesity and asthma could be traced to the "cavalier attitude" of planners and the building industry.
In a keynote speech to the Royal College of Physicians, he said: "Just as in so many ways we are what we eat, we are also what we are surrounded by.
"As Sir Winston Churchill said, 'We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.'"
Speaking to delegates at a "conference on the healing environment" in London, the Prince added: "We are beginning to see that when we build badly, it doesn't only affect the health of the natural environment, it affects our own health as well.
"So is it any surprise that our cavalier attitude to the health of our physical environment is also creating our own health problems?"
The Prince said that the UK ranked highest in the world for asthma and that a report by the Royal College of Physicians last year showed an alarming increase in allergies.
Charles has long been a campaigner for more "humane" living environments, backing the "unashamedly traditional" development at Poundbury in Dorset.
He also addressed the issue of hospital environments and the benefits they can have on patients, saying: "I understand that something as simple as the view from a hospital ward" may reduce the need for painkillers and the length of stay after surgery.
He said: "The design of wards, the amount of natural light and shadow and the quality of ventilation, all have an apparent bearing on how patients recover."
The Prince said: "It is imperative that we apply the notion of healing not only to ourselves but also to our built and natural environment which have been so brutalised throughout the last century." He added, referring to the problems with pesticides: "The unintended consequences of our past refusal to acknowledge this inter-connectedness are tragic and increasingly well-documented."
Charles called for new buildings to be seen as part of a "living language" and not as an opportunity to indulge in egotistical ambitions.
The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment has been working with the NHS to improve the quality of new hospitals.
Warning that more care needs to be taken with new technology than in the past, the Prince said: "We need to relax our somewhat obsessive preoccupation with treating specific symptoms of diseases in isolation but instead look at the whole - the person, the street, the town and city and our natural inheritance - together."
He added: " Conventional medicine has saved the lives of countless thousands of people.
"But we are struggling with the limits of what we have achieved and struggling with the dangerous consequences of our actions when we lose sight of the need for balance and for an understanding of our place in nature."
