Healthy Cities

The living environment has a major impact on the health of residents. Through the design of the living environment, people can feel comfortable and be encouraged to adopt healthy behaviours such as physical activity and social interaction.
The professorship of Healthy Cities develops applicable knowledge and measurement tools related to a healthy living environment. We do this from an integrated perspective and always in collaboration with practice partners and residents.

Improving the quality of public space is therefore a promising way to enhance residents’ health and reduce health inequalities between different groups of residents. This is particularly relevant for neighbourhoods where many vulnerable people live close together. In these areas, residents are generally less healthy and the quality of public space is often poorer, for example, due to more traffic and less greenery.

From an integrated perspective, and always in collaboration with practice partners and residents, we develop applicable knowledge and measurement tools. An important research question is which combinations of physical and social interventions work under which circumstances to make the living environment healthier. We also study how municipal professionals and other parties from the physical and social domains can collaborate with each other and with residents in this process. In addition, we explore how community initiatives can be supported, for example, initiatives from residents who want to realise their own housing complex.