What creates healthy cities?

The Commission on Creating Healthy Cities, chaired by Lord Best and Kellogg College’s Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation, Oxford, investigated the links between urban matters and health and wellbeing. Their resultant report brings together a set of recommendations, which follow under four headings, including the built environment.

And, in relation to housing and the built environment, the report focusses on a number of important elements that make the case between health and housing and associated interventions - from affordable housing, planning for healthy homes, the quality of new housing and retrofitting existing homes, energy efficiency and the levelling up agenda in terms of healthier ‘placemaking’.  

In particular, it includes recommendations for:

• Government to give a high priority in its policy and financing decisions to increasing provision of affordable housing
• Government to embed the strategic aim of improving health and wellbeing in planning policy for England
• Endorsing a call for a ‘National Retrofit Strategy’ for existing privately-owned property, and
• As part of a shift towards a broader, more holistic approach to building healthy homes, it supports proposals for a Healthy Homes Act