A healthy neighborhood does not just happen by itself. It requires conscious choices in the design of the living environment, so that a pleasant and livable neighborhood simultaneously helps people to live healthily. With this in mind, Per Prins works at Urban Sync on healthy area development, where data, models, and increasingly AI are used to make spatial choices transparent. According to Prins, health does not start only when a plan is on the table, but already in the first phase of area development: “I want us to steer towards what an area will deliver over the next thirty to fifty years for the people who live, work, and grow up there”
Healthy area development
At Urban Sync, you focus on healthy area development. What in your opinion makes an area truly healthy, and how do you ensure that health is integrated into area development from the very beginning?
“To me, an area is healthy if the healthy choice is the easy choice. That means you have greenery visible from your window, a school and a GP within walking distance, a place to run into neighbors, and shade on your way to the supermarket. The RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) points this out as well: health is just as much about mental health, social cohesion, feeling safe, and having the opportunity to strengthen yourself and each other.”
“The tricky part lies in the second half of the question. In practice, the construction program and land development budget are often already finalized before anyone looks at health. Together with TNO, Brink, Rho Adviseurs, and Horizons, we therefore wrote the Value-Driven Healthy Area Development Guide, which was published in June 2026. The core concept: start in the initiative phase with the question of which values you want to realize in an area and with whom. Think of the GGD (Municipal Health Service), the water board, a health insurer, or a housing association. These parties benefit from a healthy neighborhood, so they belong at the table early on. You record this in a Program of Values, which filters down into the program of requirements and the tender.”
You work a lot with data and models to visualize the effects of spatial choices, particularly Sync City in combination with Tygron. What is the benefit of such an approach for the parties involved? And where do the potential risks lie?
“The biggest advantage is that you can compare scenarios in an objective way. Around a meeting table, everyone has their own image of what a plan does. If you run two variants in Sync City and see that on a hot day one leaves a large portion of the walking routes without shade while the other does not, the conversation becomes about that outcome and much less about who speaks the loudest. That works for a municipality, but also for a developer who wants to substantiate their plan in a tender.”
“The second benefit is timing. We want that information on the table early on, when there are still choices to be made. That's why we are building our own web application alongside the Tygron models. A project manager or policy advisor can see there, without GIS knowledge, how a neighborhood is doing: greenery, heat, amenities within walking distance, population composition. He or she can also take a neighborhood passport as a report to a meeting.”
“There are also risks. A model calculates using the data you put into it. If the local tree map is outdated, then your heat map is too. Our lesson from past projects: request the municipal data as early as possible, as this determines how deep you can go. The second risk is pseudo-precision. A number to two decimal places feels certain, even though it is based on assumptions. I find the third risk the most important: what you cannot measure easily falls by the wayside. Social cohesion or meaning is hard to calculate. In Spoordok Leeuwarden, we therefore used two tracks: what can be calculated goes into the digital twin, and the rest we anchor in the program of requirements. The model supports the conversation. It does not replace the weighing of options.”
You are a member of Tygron's AI core group and experiment extensively with AI. Where do you currently see the greatest opportunities to use AI within area development?
“Right now, mainly in speeding up the process. A large part of an analysis is still preparation: collecting data, cleaning it, linking layers, formatting maps, writing reports. AI is already helping a lot with that. For example, in the Tygron template we use AI to classify green types, and I write many of the scripts and the web application myself in collaboration with AI models. What used to take weeks, you now have ready in days. You can spend that time in conversation with the municipality and the residents, and that, I think, is where the value lies.”
“So for me, it's about more insight and faster insight. But I find a level playing field at least as important. A large municipality has its own GIS department and a data team, whereas a small municipality often has a single policy officer who also handles five other files. If AI lowers the threshold to query data, that small municipality suddenly has the same knowledge at its disposal. Sharing knowledge then becomes the norm.”
“Further ahead, I see the greatest opportunity in parametric design that steers on output instead of input. What you want is a neighborhood with as little heat stress as possible, where the shadow on the street is adequate, where in winter enough sun enters the homes, and where people naturally move more. If you set those outcomes as goals and let a model search for designs that score best on them, you reverse the logic. Then you can interactively explore different designs and immediately see what a choice costs and yields.”
Which development in the field of AI do you find most interesting or promising? What will AI mean for the professional field in the near future?
"I find the combination of AI agents with calculation models like Tygron most interesting. A language model on its own can give a very convincing answer that is based on nothing, and that is dangerous in our profession. But an agent that sets up a scenario in the digital twin itself, has the heat stress calculated, reads the outcome, and tries a next variant based on that, calculates with real physics and real data. This makes the output-driven design from my previous answer feasible.”
“In addition, I see a lot of potential in AI as an interpreter. An alderman doesn't need to be able to read a map layer if he or she can ask in plain language why one variant scores better than another and gets an answer that references the underlying calculation. The same goes for participation. Residents can explore a plan by asking questions instead of reading a hundred-page report.”
“For the professional field, this means that the investigative work becomes cheap and judgment becomes more valuable. Making a map or running an initial scan will soon be something almost anyone can do. Which question you ask, which values you weigh, and how you explain an outcome to a council or a neighborhood—that will become the profession. I also expect that clients will start asking for substantiation sooner, because it has become so much easier to provide it. An ambition on paper without calculations will then become increasingly difficult to sell.”
What would you like to look back on with pride in five years' time regarding your contribution to healthy area development?
“That health and well-being will then be standard in every area development process. That no one asks anymore whether you should do something with it, because it is naturally included in the first sketch. And by that, I mean value-driven healthy area development.”
“A neighborhood is not just delivered, a neighborhood comes to life. I want us to steer towards what an area yields over the next thirty to fifty years for the people who live, work, and grow up there. I also want parties that benefit from this, such as health insurers, the GGD, and housing associations, to naturally participate and co-finance.”
“If the Guide has been applied in dozens of projects by then, if municipalities take their Program of Values as seriously as their land development budget, and if the models we build with Tygron help make those values measurable and manageable, then I will have contributed something I can be proud of.”
Contact info: Per Prins, Healthy Area Development Advisor at Urban Sync
https://www.linkedin.com/in/perprins/
Per Prins will present two sessions during the Tygron Community of Practice on October 29, 2026, at the Beatrix Building in Utrecht.
Interested? Click here for more information and to register.
