Most people regard green spaces as a necessity to enhance the physical health and psychological well-being of residents in promoting the general health and welfare of citizens and the environment (Röbbel, 2016). In the Modern Era, the availability of green spaces has become an integral component of urban planning for sustaining the quality of life in city environments, especially since the dawn of the 20th century. Due to globalization in rapidly-developing cities around the world, studies about green spaces are becoming an increasingly important part of the urban planning process (Mitchell and Popham, 2007). Accessibility can play an important role in determining the location of green public facilities to maximize their usability for large populations, or otherwise limit use to a smaller community (Ottensmann and Greg, 2008). However, many public green spaces are inefficiently located or distributed in urban environments (Beatley, 2000; Gehl, 2010; Gehl and Svarre, 2013). In this paper, the accessibility of urban green spaces means the ease of reaching such locations from many origins within the urban spatial network from the macro- to the micro-scale. The inaccessibility of urban green spaces, or their near-complete absence in some urban areas, is a notable consequence of rapid urbanization in many cities around the world. It is especially noticeable in the capital city of Doha in the State of Qatar, where rapid urban expansion and globalization has had a significant impact on the quality and quantity of green spaces available (Salama and Wiedmann, 2013). The paper utilizes the network analysis techniques of space syntax to objectively investigate the accessibility of urban green parks and promenades in the metropolitan region of Doha (Hillier and Hanson, 1984; Hillier, et al, 1993; Penn, et al, 1998). At the heart of the paper is the question, does the size and location of urban green spaces follow a discernible spatial logic in terms of accessibility, linked to the design intent of public planning policies? Some findings in the paper indicate there is distinctive spatial and social logic to the physical and spatial characteristics of urban green spaces above a certain size in terms of metric area. In contrast, these characteristics in smaller urban green spaces tend to be more random, primarily due to issues of land availability and amenity provision in private developments. We conclude by discussing the potential implications of the study for public planning policy about green urbanism in the State of Qatar and other rapidly-urbanizing cities around the world.

As cities continue to grow, it is becoming more and more difficult to provide balanced mobility offerings while keeping sustainability, safety and accessibility in focus. Yet, to ensure the livability of dense urban centers amid unrelenting environmental pressures and growing health concerns, it is precisely these issues that urban planners must address. Among the principal issues that the current pandemic situation has highlighted is that the ability to travel freely on foot is of paramount importance to reduce risks of contagion associated with high contact and crowding. In that respect, cities will remain relevant and attractive places to live only if they offer the proper channels to connect their diverse sets of functions and services. Taking into account the urgency of the current situation, many cities around the world are now pushing agendas for promoting active modes of travel as an alternative to risky mass transit options, including both short and long-term interventions on transport infrastructures. In light of these initiatives and to support these efforts, Systematica conducted a rigorous study mapping the sidewalks in the city of Milan to provide a holistic overview of where interventions are most needed. The study follows a two-step approach: first, it identifies the level of safety of sidewalks across the city based on a predefined rating for sidewalk widths, and second, it identifies priority intervention areas based on a set of parameters that take into consideration concentrations of vulnerable population groups and areas of high activity. Starting from the recommended interpersonal distance by the national Italian government of one meter, all sidewalks across Milan were evaluated on the basis of their capacity to allow safe and comfortable pedestrian flows while maintaining this distance. This information was then overlaid with other parameters such as access to shops and public transit to provide a deeper understanding of contextual variances considering each area’s demographic and physical urban features. Demographic information of interest includes percentages of daytime population, employees and elderly populations. Physical aspects include distributions of shops in the vicinity, public transport stops and vehicle fluxes. Synthesizing all these aspects contributed to building a map of prioritized intervention areas sensitive to perceived levels of demand. The outcomes of this study showed that almost half (45%) of Milan’s sidewalks are not fit for physical distancing practices, and about half of these (47%) are considered high priority for intervention due to the concentration of elderly populations and high overall density in the immediate surrounding areas. In sum, 21% of all sidewalks in Milan were identified as priority areas for sidewalk expansion or reclamation. Of these, 13% (around 170km) were listed as high priority. In line with the Strade Aperte (Open Streets) plan of the Municipality of Milan, this investigation provides an initial framework for analyzing the efficacy of a city’s pedestrian infrastructure to support a level of walkability that allows for new norms and standards of safety while expanding on previous walkability aims centered around personal health and safety, comfort, accessibility and sustainability. Systematica’s framework is easily replicable beyond its current application to support similar studies carried out in other cities around the world.

The human actions have caused a significant change to the climate system, with effects that will persist for decades. Climate change has several impacts, one of the major impacts is its health impacts. There are multiple connections between health and climate change, there are direct, impact mediated and socially mediated impacts as classified by WHO. This study aims at building the climate-resilient health system with the case example of Manipur, India. Manipur is located in North-eastern India with a central valley portion. The analysis of the temperature and precipitation trends along with the study of diseases prevalent in the region is done. From the analysis, a relationship between the change in climatic condition and the occurrence of diseases is established. The hazards from climate change along with pre-existing vulnerabilities can have worse health outcomes. The health impacts can only be moderated by building climate-resilient health systems which will have the capacity to manage and mediate the climate-sensitive health risks. The health systems consists’ of policies, strategies, technological advancement along with public participation and service delivery. There is a need for more systematic approach, to make use of opportunities, and to make progress in protecting health from climate change.

With one of the fastest urbanization rates in the Global-South, many Nigerian cities are experiencing an analogous rate of concretization. Cultural studies since the 1800s revealed that towns and villages are known to have tradition-based planning system with incorporated hierarchy of open spaces rooted in vernacular Yoruba urbanism. However, it appears that due to precolonial and postcolonial influences, this rural or urban model of town planning was abandoned for Western archetypes. This study examines the use of cultural philosophies in contemporary urban planning for health and physical well-being of communities. Exploration of literature on social understanding, physical observation and digitized mapping method. Results show that there exists an institutional bias against the partial or full adoption of the cultural hierarchical planning for inclusive open spaces in contemporary urban centers. Contrary to popular perception, the study discovered that in the Yorùbá public realm, the salutogenic notions for citizens’ well-being are already integrated into city plans with inclusion of multipurpose open spaces like market, village squares and home courtyard systems. Notable in the radial, elliptical, circular or grid-iron pattern of city design widely used then, the “Oba’s Palace” epitomized the sacredness of the center of power and the hierarchical order of accessible open spaces constituted the Kings’ central-business-district (Ọjà-Ọba). City-wedge “oko etílé” served as the green container or quarter open spaces that ensured food security. The cultivation of larger agro-forestry open spaces known as “oko ẹgàn” doubled as natural reserves for community economic sustenance. The cultural integration ensured a green and healthy landscape for peoples’ physical well-being. The study advocates the preservation of this heritage for the planning of contemporary urban landscapes to enhance people-centered, culture-based, resilient and inclusive physical planning concepts for the well-being of vulnerable urban populations. Keywords: culture, philosophies, urbanism, well-being, Yorùbá

Scenario planning is a tool that tests out development possibilities and their impacts on achieving community goals. It is primarily used by the government to support long-term well-being of the community. The tool influences growth policy and development laws and is useful in communications between professionals in different departments and the resulting trade-offs are important to be able to communicate with the community at large. Scenario planning that uses geographic information mapping to enable data analysis and facilitate communications has been frequently used in regional land use and transportation planning. One example is CONNECT Our Future, a regional plan completed in 2015 for the 14-county region around the City of Charlotte in the United States. Charlotte’s current comprehensive planning project, the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan, is also using scenario planning as a tool to develop alternative plans for comparisons and dialogues. The City of Charlotte has been partnering with local communities to develop the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan, a plan that will guide how the city will invest in itself over the next 20 years. Once adopted, the plan will be the foundation for strategic policy, equitable investment in infrastructure, and new regulatory tools such as the Unified Development Ordinance. It will be the blueprint for the City of Charlotte to realize its vision, which sees itself America’s Queen City, opening its arms to a diverse and inclusive community of residents, businesses, and visitors alike; a safe family-oriented city where people work together to help everyone thrive. The City of Charlotte is using a board game called Growing Better Places in their current Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan process to engage with residents and gather feedback for the Comprehensive Plan and for participants to learn about prioritizing and leveraging growth and its impacts. The community input collected during these games has also been fed into the City’s scenario analysis for developing various future growth alternatives for comparisons and negotiations. One key objective of this game is to ensure that the path to creating complete neighborhoods for all residents in the city is equitable, economically viable and fiscally responsible. This study seeks to investigate what operational issues behind this game have an effect on the effectiveness and the ability of the city to continually engage with local communities during the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan process. In particular, this study examines the pros and cons of this approach with regard to bridging the gap of under-representation by African Americans, youth, Hispanics, Latino, and senior citizens. This study also compares the various ways in which this board game is played (online vs. in-person) and attempts to identify best practices that can achieve the game’s main goal, which is to listen and engage with all communities in Charlotte. This study is concerned with the factors that are attributed to the implementation of the Growing Better Places board game. This study will be carried out by the comparative case study research method, which is one of several ways of doing case study research. It is an inductive process in that researchers gain insight and a deeper understanding through patterns in the data.

Novel coronavirus pneumonia strikes the city in 2020, making this year special. This also brings us to the attention of city public safety and health, which directly affects the healthy and sustainable development of the city. During the Spring Festival, many small towns that provide a large number of labor force have a high migration rate, and a large number of migrant workers return to their places of residence, increasing the difficulty of controlling the epidemic. The prevention and control of epidemic situation in small towns need to be further improved: ① using big data, network, travel "tracking" to prevent the occurrence of secondary infection; ② setting up temporary detection points in cities to solve the problem of inadequate implementation of urban medical supporting facilities and avoid the occurrence of infection on the way to medical treatment; ③ shortening the time difference between the government to transmit information and take measures to enable residents to get timely information about the epidemic situation; ④ enhancing the living conditions People's awareness of prevention and control, self-discipline and the ability to identify the authenticity of information, and actively encourage residents to join the epidemic prevention and control. This paper analyzes the labor migration, medical support, government measures and residents' role of small towns that provide a large number of labor force to the outside world, understands the underlying logic of the epidemic situation, proposes some solutions for urban disaster prevention and control, and increases urban resilience.

The construction of a healthy city is facing the challenge of urbanization. Although substantial improvement has been made, there are still some problems in urban planning, such as inadequate management, space out of control, environmental risks and system fragility. The reasons are: (1) the scale of urban structure is too large, there is an urgent need to strengthen the medium-and micro-spatial planning; (2) the urban system is inflexible and needs to be transformed from consumption to production. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a distributed network pattern with hierarchical system and a systematic planning strategy with production function. First of all, determine the role of community scale as the basic unit in health care and disaster prevention and mitigation. (1) Community scale directly affects the two levels of intervention with the greatest impact potential- the social determinant of health (SDH), and environmental change (in order to make individual default choices healthier and easier). Therefore, community planning can have a positive impact on public health at an earlier life cycle with better cost-effectiveness. (2) the community has the characteristics of group organization in a certain space and is often regarded as the basic unit of disaster prevention and control. Strengthening community-based governance, spatial organization, social linkages and early warning monitoring is essential for disaster deaths and losses. Secondly, analyze the health potential of productive strategies, productive strategies can be carried out according to different types of resources, in which community urban agriculture is a typical representative. Although traditional agriculture has certain health risks, people have gradually recognized the potential of urban agriculture to improve health in various ways and assessed it in terms of social, economic, ecological and nutritional aspects. the aim is to maximize health benefits and reduce negative impacts. Through three practical cases of the Plan4Health project in the United States, IET in the United Kingdom and Tokyo Nerima City in Japan, which demonstrates the health security capacity of urban agriculture as a key area of community planning and in a state of daily relaxation and abnormal emergency. Finally, it is proposed that the health planning strategy should be formulated with systematic thinking, and the productive function should be used as the "catalyst" to optimize the community space and enhance the function of the system in parallel. (1) the use of functional implantation to increase the flexibility of the system to cope with abnormal states; (2) the use of functional reorganization to increase sustainability in the face of daily state. On this basis, the full integration of productive system into healthy urban planning can give full play to its five major functions: food security function, eco-environmental function, leisure and cultural function, technological demonstration function and commercial and social security function.

Purpose: To examine how perceived neighborhood built-environment attributes influence parental license for children’s independent mobility, revealing the child-friendliness in Shanghai, China and what we can do to improve. Background: With Child-friendly City increasingly becoming global focus, children’s independent mobility, which is a major indicator of child-friendliness, is now found to be declining internationally. Due to the particularity of the group of children, parents’ permission has been proven to be an important factor restricting children’s independent mobility. Therefore, it is crucial to understand what it is that parent value about their neighborhood environment while releasing their license for children’s independent mobility, and how do these attributes come into play. Design: Exploratory cross-sectional study. Setting: Six typical neighborhoods varying in location and housing type from Shanghai, China. Subjects: Six hundred and fifty-five parents of 0- to 16-year-olds from six neighborhoods. Measures: Parental-reported questionnaires about safety concerns, environmental perceptions, facility satisfactions, improvement advices, permission on children’s independent outdoor activities around the neighborhood, and socio-economical information. Analysis: Perceived neighborhood built-environment attributes were scored and parental license for children’s independent mobility were calculated according to the questionnaire. Bivariate linear regression models were performed in IBM SPSS Statistics v24 to examine associations between parental license for children’s independent mobility and each perceived built-environment features of the neighborhood. All significant predictor variables were than entered into a multiple linear regression model. Results: Results showed that gender was a significant factor (β=-0.099, p=.008) among the other control variables (age, location and housing type). For general, parents paid great attention to the sufficiency of walking and cycling space (β=0.177, p=.000), the safety of travel environment (β=0.173, p=.000) and the safety level of children playing alone (β=0.107, p=.008). The sufficiency of facilities for parents (β=-0.156, p=.000) and the quality of streets (β=-0.112, p=.004) had negative effects on parental license. Predictor significant variables showed difference between genders. Parents of boys remained focusing on the safety of the environment while parents of girls payed new attention to satisfaction of housing conditions (β=-0.145, p=.008). The regression model for parents of girls were better than the one of boys in goodness of fit. Conclusions: Safety of the neighborhood environment and sufficiency of walking and cycling space may be the most important perceived environmental attributes that affect parental license for children’s independent mobility. The safety level may be a greater consideration for parents of boys than of girls. Creating safe and child-friendly travel environment around neighborhoods may be the focus of future work to make Shanghai a more child-friendly city. Space for children to walk and cycle needs to be provided and routes designed. Limitations are the use of parental-report and cross-sectional data. The study indicates current context of creating child-friendly cities in China to an extent. Keywords: Neighborhood; Built Environment; Perceived Neighborhood Built-environment; Children; Independent Mobility; Parental License; Parental Perceptions; Child-friendly. References (Partial): [1] Bringolf-Isler, B., et al. (2010). "Built environment, parents' perception, and children's vigorous outdoor play." Preventive Medicine 50(5-6): 251-256. [2] Foster, S., et al. (2015). "Suspicious minds: Can features of the local neighbourhood ease parents' fears about stranger danger?" Journal of Environmental Psychology 42: 48-56. [3] Smith, M., et al. (2019). "Children's Transport Built Environments: A Mixed Methods Study of Associations between Perceived and Objective Measures and Relationships with Parent Licence for Independent Mobility in Auckland, New Zealand." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16(8).

With the frequent occurrence of epidemic diseases such as “SARS”, “H1N1”, “MERS”and“COVID-19”, public health emergencies, which are characterized by large-scale, high risk, strong persistence and high risk, have become more and more obvious threats to the life and health of urban residents and put forward a huge test to the urban public service system. As the first city of COVID-19 human infection, the core of the epidemic spread and the worst-hit area, Wuhan is an ideal case study. Based on the analysis of the epidemic prevention and control actions in the first three months of the outbreak in Wuhan, this paper evaluates the vulnerability of the public service system and facilities in Wuhan. The results show that Wuhan is faced with many problems, such as the failure of community-level public service facilities, the imbalance of public service allocation in the central city, and the significant gap of graded service supply, when dealing with public health emergencies. Further studies found that due to the lack of dynamic early warning mechanism, the decoupling of public service construction from the urbanization process, the difficulty of service turnover and subsidence and other factors, the public service response was delayed. Based on these practical difficulties, this paper puts forward the construction path of the emergency response mechanism for the city level public service system, specifically including the following five key contents: (1) Improving the emergency plan path of the public service system; (2) Establishing the organizational structure of the emergency management system according to the administrative divisions; (3) Building a community-based mobilization system; (4) Establishing the regional joint defense and control interaction mechanism in public health emergencies; (5) Reserving appropriate strategic construction space; (6) Strengthening the emergency infrastructure construction. Finally, based on the path of emergency response mechanism, this paper proposes the corresponding city wide spatio-temporal prevention and control network strategy, so as to provide a reference for the realization of city health and order.

The Regional Plan for Sustainable Development of the Brussels Capital Region identifies the canal area as the largest strategic development pole of the Region. It concerns a densely built, less-favoured, culturally diverse and segregated area. As a formal industrial area, it maintains an important economical role. In 2015, the Region launched the Canal Plan as a guiding tool for the redevelopment of the whole canal area. Since its establishment, numerous initiatives have been supported to translate its principles into concrete realisations. According to critical reflections by key-stakeholders, these projects showed the need to complement the vision with a specific strategy for the coherence, quality and identity of the public space, with special attention for social and environmental improvements. With this Public Space Plan (PSP), launched in 2019, better social and ecological relations, which are currently divided by the canal infrastructure, are sought. The renovation of the public space demonstrates the potential to form a new centrality, a common and inclusive platform between different neighbourhoods and its citizens. The plan can also allow for more active, and hence healthy, lifestyles in a more natural and attractive environment. Via an international competition, a consortium of multidisciplinary consultants was selected to participate in a framework agreement. They elaborated the PSP in collaboration with principal stakeholders. The plan forms a strategic framework, guiding all developers and designers of public and related open spaces. It contains ambitions and recommendations for the areas’ identity and usage (recreational and economical), its linear public spaces (mobility) and its landscape and sustainability (blue and green networks). By designing the crossings (in their form, materials and furniture) similarly on both sides of the canal, and treating the canal area as a new centrality, social barriers are expected to be lowered. By strengthening the ecological and social qualities and by redesigning its linear public spaces – with priority and more space for walking, cycling and recreation in a greener context – we foresee a reduction of social, green and public space inequities between different parts of the region and a decrease in the pollution levels caused by motor vehicles. In consequence, we expect local health and well-being levels to improve. The implementation of the PSP is supported by a central procurement agency and a follow-up committee with key stakeholders. Via the agency, all actors with public and or related open spaces can call upon the designated design team for their individual studies and projects. The follow up committee manages the convergence of all plans, studies and projects in line with the vision and ambitions of the PSP, stimulating efficient implementation of individual projects. Several local communes and regional agencies have joined the central procurement agency. A number of studies, leading towards realisations, have been completed. Authorities and private developers apply the PSP in their plans and projects. The existing dynamic of transformation is strengthened and ambitions come within sight due to this innovative and flexible approach. A PSP can offer added value for cities. Specific ambitions and recommendations of the PSP and its implementation methodology stimulate the reduction of existing inequities within the city and foster healthy and inclusive urban environments. Due to the integration of ecological and recreational ambitions in the PSP, physical and mental well-being can be improved. Such an PSP for a part of the city, supported by a central procurement agency and a follow-up committee to boost its implementation, is replicable in other urban areas. This innovative technique needs to be adapted to local contexts, ambitions and recommendations to achieve optimum integration, acceptability and overall success.