Publication: Healthy Cities: Revisiting the Role of Cities in Promoting Health
Loading...
Published
2023-10-18
ISSN
Date
2023-10-18
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
With most people already living in cities and the global urban population estimated to double by 2050, cities are central to human well-being and sustainable development. Whereas cities reap the economic and social benefits of agglomeration, proximity to services, and innovation, they also face significant health and environmental issues. The presence of urban poverty, complexity of urban systems, rapidity of often-unplanned urbanization, and certainty of unanticipated shocks complicate urban strategies for health and well-being. Indeed, COVID-19 revealed the significant vulnerability of global and urban systems to pandemics and the imminent climate-related impacts. Cities can confront these threats and support communities by integrating healthy city action with other urban development agendas and prioritizing human and ecosystem health in the design and management of urban environments. The Healthy Cities Report aims to provide high-level guidance to practitioners in green, inclusive, and resilient urban development while asserting the essential role of cities in improving human and ecosystem health. It introduces an action-oriented ‘TIP’ Framework for achieving healthy cities with three components: Targeted support, Integrated action, and Preparation for future challenges. It explores three pivotal modern issues—equity, climate change, and COVID-19—as they define the context for urban health policy and practice. The report suggests eight action areas for healthy cities, including adequate housing, public spaces, transportation systems, access to healthcare, water and sanitation systems, food systems, effective institutions, and sustainable funding.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Lee, Hyunji; Hasoloan, Jonathan; Chapman, Terri B.; Das, Maitreyi Bordia. 2023. Healthy Cities: Revisiting the Role of Cities in Promoting Health. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40486 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Combating Heat in Cities(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-25)This report stems from growing concern about the threat of extreme heat in urban settings and its adverse impacts on health. The team made use of the TIP—that is, the targeted, integrated, and prepared—framework, introduced in the recent "Healthy Cities" report (Lee et al. 2023), to help World Bank task teams explore pathways toward urban heat investments. This study gathered city responses and investigated existing World Bank initiatives to gain an understanding of what had already been done and the potential for future action. The main part of this report reviews the GPURL portfolio from 2012 to 2022, illustrating a spectrum of relevant heat interventions. Recommendations built on these findings highlight opportunities to operationalize urban heat in World Bank investments.Publication Targeted, Integrated, and Prepared Policy Packages to Address the Urban Heat in Korea(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-24)Global warming has dramatically increased the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme heat events, or heatwaves. Exposure to extreme heat presents a wide range of challenges for public health, labor productivity, and economic growth, among other areas, which are often amplified in cities. Globally, recent deadly heatwaves attest to the urgency of the urban heat problem, which is growing with the ongoing expansion of urban populations and the progression of climate change. This policy brief examines the responses of the Republic of Korea to urban heat problems at national and city levels. Korea formally recognized heat as a natural disaster in 2018, which represented a significant milestone in institutionalizing urban heat interventions across various ministries and agencies. Guided by national frameworks, Korean cities, including Busan and Daegu, the two cities presented as cases in this brief, developed and implemented a package of complementary actions, consisting of legislation and planning, small-scale capital investments, and social programs. This comprehensive effort to address the urban heat agenda in Korea contributed to lowering local temperatures, reducing heat-related health costs by US173.22 million dollars, and reducing the heat related mortality rate by 72 percent compared to the counterfactual. The Korean experience can inform World Bank task teams and client cities and countries as they explore feasible entry points for refining and scaling up urban heat interventions in the coming years.Publication Scaling the Heights : Social Inclusion and Sustainable Development in Himachal Pradesh(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-01)Himachal Pradesh has the reputation of being stable, inclusive, cohesive and well-governed and it stands apart in many respects from its neighbors in northern India. It has additionally, achieved remarkable growth, especially in the last two decades, which has been accompanied by very good human development outcomes. Despite being a predominantly rural society, educational attainment in Himachal Pradesh for instance, is among the best in the country; poverty headcount is nearly one-third of the national average; life expectancy is 3.4 years longer than the number of years an average Indian expects to live; and, per capita income is the second highest among "special category" states in India. Underlying its strong economic and social development outcomes is Himachal Pradesh's commitment to expand access to public services to the remotest areas, across tough, hilly terrain and its strong institutional foundations. Inter-group disparities are low in a state where traditionally disadvantaged groups such as the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) make up a solid 30 percent of the population.Publication Environmental Priorities and Poverty Reduction : A Country Environmental Analysis for Colombia(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)The analysis of the cost of environmental degradation conducted as part of the country environmental analysis (CEA) shows that the most costly problems associated with environmental degradation are urban and indoor air pollution; inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene; natural disasters (such as flooding and landslides); and land degradation. The burden of these costs falls most heavily on vulnerable segments of the population. To address these problems, this report identifies a number of cost-effective policy interventions that could be adopted in the short and medium terms to support sustainable development goals. In recent decades, considerable progress has been made in addressing the water and the forestry environmental agendas. The impact of environmental degradation on the most vulnerable groups suggests the need to increase emphasis on environmental health issues. However, the environmental management agenda has yet to catch up with this shift in priorities from watershed and forestry to environmental health problems because mechanisms in the current institutional structure to signal these changes are not yet in place. Improved monitoring and dissemination of information on environmental outcomes, assignment of accountability for environmental actions and outcomes, and involvement of a broad range of stakeholders are three important mechanisms to allow these signals to be picked up.Publication The Low Carbon City Development Program Guidebook(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014)According to the United Nations population fund, the world is undergoing the largest wave of urban growth in history, with more people now living in cities than in rural areas. Cities are also responsible for a high proportion of global carbon emissions, which are the main driver of anthropogenic climate change. By taking the lead on low carbon development, cities have the opportunity to engage in an important dialogue about sustainable development, directly address local issues, and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Low carbon development strategies allow cities to position themselves as major players in climate change mitigation, as well as set an example for the development of national emission reduction policies. The systematic approach offered by a low carbon city development program (LCCDP) enables a city to overcome the barriers faced in single project implementation and pursue an integrated low carbon pathway. It provides a common framework to identify, implement, and measure low carbon interventions that will not only contribute to lower emissions, but will also address urban development needs. The LCCDP guidebook helps orient cities to design and implement an LCCDP that complies with the LCCDP assessment protocol, which is a new protocol based on existing, internationally recognized standards for systems design, and GHG accounting. The LCCDP assessment protocol consists of a set of standardized requirements developed to ensure that LCCDPs will achieve their targets and objectives when implemented. Thus the guidebook aims to assist the reader through the process of designing and implementing an LCCDP.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2017(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-01-30)Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? This book addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.Publication Looking Beyond the Horizon(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06)The story of how the PVH Corp. (referred to throughout this document as PVH) came to leada group of its top suppliers to build factories and a fabric mill in Ethiopia’s Hawassa IndustrialPark (HIP) is the study of a strong collaboration between a private company looking to optimizeits business model and a government aiming to transform its economy through global strategic repositioning. The success of this story hinges upon the intersection of their goals and a shared vision of development that includes a strong commitment to social and environmental goals.PVH was motivated to invest in Ethiopia to respond to shifts in the global apparel sector, its growing desire to retool its business model and to address its concerns about compliance with social and environmental standards in its traditional sourcing locations. PVH had decided to rethink its business model and to look beyond the horizon towards a new region in which tolocate its manufacturing base. To have better oversight and enforcement, PVH moved to adopta fully integrated vertical supply chain, including direct investment in one of the manufacturingfacilities.Key to Ethiopia’s success in attracting this important investor was the government’s ability and willingness to strategically evaluate its foreign direct investment (FDI) needs and strategy and to take steps to evolve into an attractive location for higher value-added export-oriented investment.This case study explains a private investor’s site selection process. It assesses the elements PVH prioritized when deciding to commit to Ethiopia, and specifically to HIP. The case study further assesses the government of Ethiopia’s strategy, level of readiness, interest, and commitment, and sets out some key challenges that lie ahead for this partnership. The case study is structured in ten sections. Section second offers a brief background on the textile and apparel industry, including an explanation of its value chain. It provides a brief corporate profile of PVH and its current global footprint and business model. Section third describes the site selection process: PVH´s initial explorations in Africa, its consideration of several African countries, and its initial conversations and negotiations with Ethiopian authorities. Section fourth discusses the Ethiopian government’s strategy to attract and expand export-oriented investments, including efforts to bolster the country’s competitiveness. This section attempts to offer some explanation why Ethiopia was the right fit at the right time and its level of readiness to land such an investment. It provides a brief profile of PVH’s Africa point of entry, the HIP. Section sixth covers the challenges that lie ahead for this-project---potential setbacks that will affect not only the consolidation and growth of the textiles and apparel industry in Ethiopia, but also the government’s vision of becoming the “manufacturing powerhouse of Africa.” Section eighth concludes with some key lessons from PVH’s decision to invest in Ethiopia. Such lessons may be relevant to countries or regions interested inattracting FDI and may be of particular interest to other African countries in their quest to attract major investments in the textile and apparel sector.Publication Economy Profile of West Bank and Gaza(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10-31)Sixteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2019 covers 11 areas of business regulation. Ten of these areas - starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency - are included in the ease of doing business score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures. Doing Business provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. This economy profile presents indicators for West Bank and Gaza; for 2019 West Bank and Gaza ranks 116.Publication Senegal : Report on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC) : Corporate Governance Country Assessment(Washington, DC, 2006-06)This report provides an assessment of Senegal's corporate governance policy framework, enforcement, and compliance practices. It highlights recent improvements in corporate governance regulation, makes policy recommendations, and provides investors with a benchmark against which to measure corporate governance in Senegal. The report identifies several key next steps that can be carried out in Senegal and that focus on implementation, including: (i) developing program to build awareness of the importance of corporate governance and to train directors in modern corporate governance principles; (ii) drafting a code of corporate governance; (iii) addressing governance weaknesses in the state-owned enterprises. A separate report reviews the special issues for the corporate governance of state-owned enterprises in Senegal; and (iv) revising the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA) uniform act for commercial companies (over the long term) to incorporate modern corporate governance principles.Publication A Puzzle with Missing Pieces(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12)The identification of key determinants of aid effectiveness is a long-standing question in the development community. This paper reviews the literature on aid effectiveness at the project level and then extends the inquiry in a variety of dimensions with new data on World Bank investment project financing. It confirms that the country institutional setting and quality of project supervision are associated with project success, as identified previously. However, many aspects of the development project cycle, especially project design, have been difficult to measure and therefore under-investigated. The paper finds that project design, as proxied by the estimated value added of design staff, the presence of prior analytic work, and other specially collected measures, is a significant predictor of ultimate project success. These factors generally grow in predictive importance as the income level of the country rises. The results also indicate that a key determinant of the staff’s contribution is their experience with previous World Bank projects, but not other characteristics such as age, education, or country location. Key inputs to the project production process associated with subsequent performance are not captured in routine data systems, although it is feasible to do so. Further, the conceptualization and measurement of the success of project-based aid should be revisited by evaluative bodies to reflect a project’s theorized contribution to development outcomes.