“Shaping Cities for Health: Complexity and the Planning of Urban Environments in the 21st Century” is due to be published on 2nd June 2012 and you are welcome to attend the launch event on Wednesday 30th May (register here) 

Dr Julio D. Davila, Senior Lecturer at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit is among the UCL contingent contributing to this report.

The UCL–Lancet Commission of Healthy Cities provides an analysis of how health outcomes are part of the complexity of urban processes, arguing against the assumption that urban health outcomes will improve with economic growth and demographic change. Instead, it highlights the role that urban planning can, and should, play in delivering health improvements through reshaping the urban fabric of our cities. The report considers this through case studies of sanitation and wastewater management (Mumbai), urban mobility (Bogotá), building standards (London), the urban heat island effect (London) and urban agriculture (Havana and Accra). These are followed with a discussion of the implications of a complexity approach for planning of urban environments, emphasising project-based experimentation and evaluation leading to self-reflection and dialogue.

The UCL–Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities is a major inaugural project of Sustainable Cities, the second of UCL's four cross-disciplinary Grand Challenges addressing major societal issues of global relevance. The commission's authorship includes contributors from four of UCL's ten academic faculties, from the Universities of Pelotas and Otago, and from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Other Related Links

The Healthy Cities report follows UCL's first Lancet Commission report, Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change, in May 2009.

One of the case studies in this second report is part of a short documentary that shows the problematic of sanitation in Mumbai:

Bartlett TV

A documentary film on Slum Sanitation in Mumbai by Girish Menon, produced by PRATHA - PART 1/2

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A documentary film on Slum Sanitation in Mumbai by Girish Menon, produced by PRATHA - PART 2/2

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