Do you and your friends always update each other on their latest Netflix show? Pre-interweb, these discussions would be about the latest movies showing at the cinema. Times have changed – and I do lament the loss of local cinemas – but we’re lucky to still have somewhere like the Gala Cinema. I enjoy the cinema experience so much that a friend and I have started an annual film festival celebrating the greatest movies of all-time, starting with Pulp Fiction (get your tickets for October 5's Be Kind Rewind festival here).

What has this all got to do with Blue Zones? Well, my latest Netflix recommendation is a series called Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones by Dan Buettner. It charts places in the world with the highest proportion of centenarians and looks into their lifestyles to see how we might adopt similar practices elsewhere.

After watching this series, I reflected on how the Illawarra has strong potential as a Blue Zone. It has many positive natural characteristics – such as bush and beach – but there are also architectural factors that may contribute to a place becoming a Blue Zone, so I thought I’d cover a few of these.

1. Move Naturally

There’s a cluster of villages on the hills of Sardinia that have one of the earliest discovered Blue Zones. The urban design in these villages encourages (almost requires) one to walk. Being on slopes and having been built prior to the motor vehicle, the streets are more suited to a pedestrian scale. This means integrating exercise into one’s lifestyle. When it’s more convenient to walk to the shops, church or your mate’s place, it means you get that daily dose of moving we’ve been told is so critical to being healthy. Most homes are more than a single storey and therefore require inhabitants to further increase their everyday exercise. Anyone see the comparison to our neck of the woods? More footpaths and bike paths, please Council!

2. Connect

One of the main insights Buettner discovered is connection with community – family, friends, and your ‘tribe’ beyond. We are so lucky to have tight-knit well-connected communities in the Illawarra. Where a Sardinian village might have a town square in which everyone can socialise, we have beach pools and pavilions. It’s near-impossible to not run into someone you know at the Austi beach pavilion and the same goes for any of Illawarra’s other ocean pools – they are our “town squares”. We can bring the same urban communal space into our homes by designing carefully curated living indoor and outdoor spaces that allow for those all-important family and friend get-togethers.

3. Outlook

Another pillar of Buettner’s Blue Zone insights is an outlook which encompasses things like life purpose, religion and being part of something bigger than oneself. This one manifests in different ways in our area: we have churches and their communities, but also community gardens, bush walks, volunteer groups and men’s sheds. By contributing to something beyond your personal zone of influence and experiencing something bigger than yourself, i.e. God or nature or wherever your belief system takes you, these will contribute to your overall chances of reaching 100. I’ve seen this manifesting architecturally in some buildings in our area, from the simple maker’s studio to Japanese-inspired meditation pavilions. One of my favourite spots is the Bells Point chair on the cliff between little Austi and main Austi beaches. Inside our homes this can be a perfectly placed window that draws one’s gaze outside to nature.

C’mon Illawarrans, my challenge to you all is to become the next Blue Zone. First step – leave your car at home!