The Little Book of The Health Of Cities

In this Little Book we suggest that rethinking urban sustainability needs to be done by taking a systems approach. We illustrate how human beings and cities are integrated, complex living systems and that the health and wellbeing of people is compromised by degrading their functioning through various forms of pollution. We need to promote and protect health, both for the people who live in the urban environment and of the urban environment itself. According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 1998) “A healthy city is one that is continually creating and improving those physical and social environments and expanding those community resources which enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life and developing to their maximum potential”. Costanza and Mageau (1999:105) have proposed that “a healthy ecosystem is one that is sustainable – that is, it has the ability to maintain its structure (organization) and function (vigor) over time in the face of external stress (resilience).” We recognize that as different fields of science compete for attention and resources, there is a tendency to put each of those fields at the center of attention. However, for achieving the global sustainable development goals there are many entry points and each of the goals are connected to many others and can be put into the center as a starting point for action. Although “health” is one of the goals (SDG3), in this Little Book, we do not merely aim at stressing the importance of the health goal and that of all who are in the health and related professions. The idea we present in “The Health of Cities” is one about cities as living urban systems, which need to be healthy to sustain healthy human lives and a healthy planet. Today, people are in the position to create the favorable or impossible conditions for life on earth. Cities are the places where people are the most creative and productive, so it is imperative that we focus our energies on how to make our cities and their populations as healthy as possible. For that reason, former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, on various occasions said that, “Our struggle for global sustainability will be won or lost in cities.”

source :

https://www.ukcric.com/media/1859/littlebookofheathofcities.pdf