The heartbeat of the city

Our health depends more on the design and planning of cities than we realise. Physical and mental health are quintessential elements of liveable and healthy cities and yet, they are often missing from discussions and practices of urban planning and design. Ensuring that the urban environment promotes healthy lifestyles is crucial. It requires access to clean water and sanitation, good medical infrastructure, effective disease detection and control, good communications, data collection and analysis and a comprehensive focus on enhancing quality of life for all.

By placing people, their well-being and quality of life at the heart of urban sustainability, we can "future-proof" our cities and communities against a wide range of health concerns. 
Putting health at the centre of cities also results in additional benefits. Health-promoting urban design and policies can have positive spillover consequences, helping mobility issues, attracting investment, improving a city’s reputation and creating business niches around culture or sport.

This Special Session will explore the opportunity to prevent and respond to health challenges through better planning and innovative measures, promoting quality of life and health-centred decision-making, policies and actions. It will delve into the complex and multiple dimensions of health and well-being through creative sessions featuring experts from various fields related to health and quality of life.

Further, compelling success stories will be shared and presented as tools to guide people-centred policies and plans as well as investments in resilient infrastructure enabling sustainable cities and communities. 

Session highlights

• Participants will be immersed in a reflective process through discussions among health professionals, urban planners and well-being experts, pushing the conversation beyond conventional approaches.
• A live painting session throughout the event will illustrate the various exchanges and conclusions from each panel, providing a non-verbal, non-written representation of the definition of urban health.
• Participants will be immersed in a live exploration of how sound shapes their serenity, balancing the discord of urban noise with the soothing whispers of nature. 

Guiding questions

• How would cities look if they were designed with the explicit goal of promoting physical and mental health? What are some of the radical transformations we need to make cities healthier for all?
• How can urban environments take into account aggregate individual metrics in order to design healthier cities? What urban elements could be adjusted based on this wealth of information?
• How might urban planners and public health experts collaborate with storytellers to create narrative-driven urban spaces that promote health and quality of life for all?
• How do health-centred spaces in the city encourage a deeper connection to nature, create community-building and improve well-being?  What are some cases where this has been successfully achieved?

Key messages

• Our cities’ design has a major impact on our health and well-being. Physical and mental health should be key elements of urban planning supporting quality of life, urban resilience and sustainability.
• Designing healthy cities requires a people-centred approach to development, maximising social cohesion and environmental preservation.
• Robust data collection and analysis is a key instrument of designing healthy cities.
• Combining innovative tools with local traditional practices can greatly enhance the overall health of cities.