A healthy city must be a sustainable city
Back in the 1980s, I worked for the Department of Public Health in the City of Toronto. We were developing and implementing the ideas that contributed to what became a world-wide healthy city movement.
But I was surprised to find, in talking to urban planners, that urban design at that time was not strongly linked to what, to me, was the obvious point of the whole exercise: That people’s health, well-being and quality of life is — or should be — what it’s all about. From my point of view, they always were two sides of the same coin — a healthy city must be a sustainable city, because while we may spend most of our time in built environments, we spend 100 per cent of our time within natural ecosystems that are the ultimate determinant of our health.
That also leads naturally to our second recommendation, which is to identify, restore, and protect areas of ecological and cultural significance, working with local First Nation communities, ecologists and other professionals. It also often consumes prime agricultural land, because cities tend to be located where there is good agricultural land to support the population.In their 2004 book Urban Sprawl and Public Health, Frumkin, Frank and Jackson identified the main impacts as diseases related to increased air pollution, reduced physical activity and increased obesity, injuries and deaths related to traffic, and impacts on mental well-being and social capital.
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