Malgorzata TOMCZAK

Healthy city

Healthy city is the strategy of many cities and regions. It includes a variety of goals, which in a general description can be boiled down to measures to improve environmental conditions and the health of residents.

What is a healthy city in the context of architecture and planning? - we ask in this issue architects, but also local government officials, since it is most often up to them to determine the direction in which urbanized space develops.

Cities are the living space of a growing part of the world's population, according to UN forecasts, 70 percent of humanity will live in them by 2050. In the context of climate change and growing demographics, it is worth taking care to plan space in such a way that it has a positive impact on our health, because as its population grows, so do the problems to be solved. The ills of our cities are gaining momentum: air, noise or artificial light pollution, traffic problems, ecological imbalance and inadequate quality of greenery, irresponsible shaping of space all contribute to a lower quality of life, and thus an increase in diseases of civilization. In principle, we know how to counteract this and plan healthy cities, we have thousands of studies and publications on the subject, so it's time to change paradigms and effectively put theory into practice.