Healthy & Resilient Cities of the Future: Bridging the Gap between Designers and Public Health Professionals, in Planning, Designing and Managing Initiatives

Dear Colleagues, 

The phenomenon  of urbanization has changed the living habits and lifestyles of urban dwellers at an unprecedented speed. For the first time, in 2007, more than half of the global population was living in cities, and by 2050, this number is estimated to grow to two-thirds of the global population. Cities are not only where most people live, but also the urban environment where most of the key determinants of public health can be found. 

In the WHO Urban Health Research Agenda (UHRA), a set of global urban health research priorities for 2022-2032 set out in the manifesto “Setting global research priorities for urban health” (WHO, 2022) were defined, including environmental health, climate change, housing, physical activity, road safety and emergency preparedness and response. Among these topics, environmental health and climate change resilience, housing conditions and indoor well-being, physical activity and road safety, emergency preparedness and response to social and sanitary emergencies (such as COVID-19) are multi-disciplinary targets to be improved. 

This Special Issue, "Healthy and Resilient Cities of the future: bridging the gap between designers and Public Health professionals in planning, designing and managing initiatives" aims to collect studies on medium- to long-term experiences and actions that can have impacts at global, national, and local levels by identifying existing gaps in urban health research. Its objectives are to develop global research priorities capable of addressing research gaps and to implement and strengthen knowledge using rigorous and harmonized methodologies and to provide scientific evidence for the development of context-specific, multisectoral interventions that promote urban health. 

The purpose of this Special Issue is to build city-level evidence on the relationship between policy, environmental, economic and social factors in urban environments and health outcomes in a scenario of co-production of knowledge.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Rebecchi
Prof. Dr. Marija Jevtic
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• urban health
• salutogenic cities
• healthy lifestyle promotion
• healthy design strategies
• walkable environment
• therapeutic landscape design
• healing architectures
• healthy living spaces