Abstract
The history of European cities reflects the close, complex ties that unite urban planning and human health. An effective remedy against epidemics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, city planning has, paradoxically, contributed to the appearance of many problems related to the health and well-being of people in the modern era. In September 2012, the European Member States of the WHO adopted “Health 2020”, a strategic policy framework for the twenty-first century. Health 2020 explicitly recognizes the influence of the urban environment on health and the role of healthy cities and national networks in carrying forward the objectives and themes of this European strategy. Health 2020 also recognizes the emblematic role of the leadership of local governments in the development of health. Urban planning should address this activism in European cities and the need to overcome what can be defined as the risk of “projectism”, the risk of a short-term vision relying on isolated interventions rather than long-term programs or policies that can profoundly modify the organization of contemporary urban models in favor of the health and well-being of city inhabitants.
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Notes
- 1.
The indicators chosen for this assessment are whether the city:
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Addressed the twelve HUP objectives;
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Demonstrated integration with Healthy Impact Assessment and Healthy Ageing;
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Displayed a range of activity at different spatial scales;
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Evidenced both an integrated strategic approach and implementation at the local level;
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Involved a good range of relevant planning agencies and community stakeholders.
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- 2.
This consists in putting together a series of data from the 99 cities in the European network and the 31 national networks. These data regarded: annual data that each member city in the network should provide based on a unitary format; an online questionnaire, the organization of information according to three types of case study (thematic, on core themes of city status; strategic, on core attributes of healthy city activity; and proudest achievements); the assessment of indicators from Eurostat and national databases; and document analysis.
- 3.
Determinants of health are factors that influence the state of health of an individual, a community, or a population. They can be grouped into different categories: personal behaviours and lifestyle; social factors that can be an advantage or disadvantage, working and living conditions; access to health services; general socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental conditions; genetic factors. The Dahlgren-Whitehead model, which is widely used in Europe, reflects the European culture of the welfare state based on the “right to health” and adopts the “multi-sectoral” vision of protecting health contained in the Declaration of Alma Ata. This model contains a series of concentric layers corresponding to different levels of influence. At the centre there is the individual, with his or her biological characteristics: sex, age, genetic history, i.e., the determinants of health that cannot be modified. The modifiable determinants, those that can be corrected and changed, are situated in layers from the inside to the outside: individual lifestyles, social and community networks, living and working environment, the political, social, economic, and cultural context.
- 4.
Theme 1: Investing in health throughout the course of life (life-course approach) and Theme 2: Addressing the great challenges in public health in reference to both transmittable and non-transmittable diseases, favouring the empowerment of people; Theme 3: Reinforcing health systems centred on the individual and their capacities, short reaction time in emergencies, and surveillance in terms of public health; Theme 4: Creation of resilient communities and environments favourable to health.
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D’Onofrio, R., Trusiani, E. (2018). Goals, Opportunities and Limits to the European Healthy Cities Network. In: Urban Planning for Healthy European Cities. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71144-7_2
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