Designing cities with a focus on wellbeing and health

Urban environments in cities and city regions hold the key to population health and affordable health services.

In 2016, I was asked to present a workshop for Diputació Barcelona under their ‘Urban environment and health’ programme. The objectives of Diputació Barcelona programme ‘Urban environment and health’ are four-fold: to support health through urban planning, green spaces, housing and facilities.

This blog links to an article I was asked to prepare for their publication ‘Territori i Ciutat’, issue 58.

The article takes as its theme the four tenets of the Health 2020 – an international policy initiative; innovative leadership, reducing inequalities, active citizenship and life-course approaches.

It illustrates how these themes are relevant to the ‘Urban environment and health’ programme and may, as cross-cuttting approaches, be useful in supporting healthy literacy and a wide ownership of the programme both by communities and a range of built environment practitioners.