Urban Design, Transport, and Health

Urban Design, Transport, and Health

The Lancet Global Health, Vol. 10, No. 6

Executive Summary

Good city planning produces co-benefits for individual and planetary health and wellbeing. In 2016, the Lancet Series on urban design, transport, and health drew attention to the importance of integrated upstream city planning policies as a pathway to creating healthy and sustainable cities, and proposed a set of city planning indicators that could be used to benchmark and monitor progress. In this follow-up series, the authors show how the indicators can guide decisions about what must change in order to create healthy and sustainable cities and how research can be used to guide urban policy to achieve urban and population health. They provide tools that other cities can use to replicate the indicators, and explore “where to next” to create healthy and sustainable cities, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

• Creating healthy and sustainable cities: what gets measured, gets done

  Billie Giles-Corti, Anne Vernez Moudon, Melanie Lowe, Deepti Adlakha, Ester Cerin, Geoff Boeing, and others

• Urban design is key to healthy environments for all

  Thiago Herick de Sa, Abraham Mwaura, Cristina Vert, Pierpaolo Mudu, Nathalie Roebbel, Nhan Tran, and others

• Measuring what matters: supporting cities in tackling climate and health challenges

  Honorine van den Broek d’Obrenan, Rachel Huxley

• The future is urban: integrated planning policies can enable healthy and sustainable cities

  Deepti Adlakha, Felix John

• City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities

  Melanie Lowe, Deepti Adlakha, James F Sallis, Deborah Salvo, Ester Cerin, Anne Vernez Moudon, and others

• Determining thresholds for spatial urban design and transport features that support walking to create healthy and sustainable cities: findings from the IPEN Adult study

  Ester Cerin, James F Sallis, Deborah Salvo, Erica Hinckson, Terry L Conway, Neville Owen, and others

• Using open data and open-source software to develop spatial indicators of urban design and transport features for achieving healthy and sustainable cities

  Geoff Boeing, Carl Higgs, Shiqin Liu, Billie Giles-Corti, James F Sallis, Ester Cerin, and others

• What next? Expanding our view of city planning and global health, and implementing and monitoring evidence-informed policy

  Billie Giles-Corti, Anne Vernez Moudon, Melanie Lowe, Ester Cerin, Geoff Boeing, Howard Frumkin, and others