The Evaluation of Geographical Health Facilities Structure in Makassar City, Indonesia.

Cities across the world, during the last period, have been shocked by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world of planning has since persevered in providing a response, in terms of how to anticipate this outbreak in the future. Various kinds of concepts have been issued, with various views and points of view. However, one of the needs for this planning is an appropriate evaluation of the geographic structure of existing health facilities, in order to properly provide consideration for future urban planning. This study attempts to provide an integrated model of how to evaluate the geographic structure of health facilities with a case study in Makassar City, Indonesia. By combining big data and spatial analysis, it is expected that it will find patterns and directions for acceptable health facilities planning.

Healthy City Community Space-Oriented Structural Planning and Management Optimization under COVID-19.

This work studies ways of Healthy City Construction (HCC) and Urban Governance Optimization (UGO) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The specific urban community space planning structure is proposed following a literature review on the healthy city's theoretical basis and historical development. Then, the proposed HCC-oriented community space structure is tested by surveying residents' physical and mental health and infectious risk using a questionnaire survey and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). Specifically, the particle fitness is calculated according to the original data conditions, and the community space with the highest fitness is determined. Based on the calculation, the community space's neighbors are investigated from different aspects through a questionnaire survey on patients' daily activities and community health security coverage. The results showed that: (1) The score of daily activities of community patients with respiratory diseases was 2312 before the implementation of the proposed community structure and 2715 after the implementation. Therefore, the service quality of residents increases after implementation. (2) The proposed HCC-oriented community space structure improves the physical self-control ability of chronic patients and helps them reduce their pain. This work aims to create a people-oriented healthy city community space, improve the city's "immune system," and regenerate the energy and environmental sustainability of the urban living environment.

The Role of the COVID-19 Crisis in Shaping Urban Planning for Improved Public Health: A Triangulated Study.

This paper aims to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the link between urban planning practices and public health. A triangulated study was conducted to gain a comprehensive understanding of the topic. The first phase consisted of semi-structured interviews with health and urban planning experts, which were analyzed with the aid of Artificial Intelligence tools. The second phase involved an on-site investigation in the city of Algiers, including a survey, site visits, and a thorough analysis of the master plan for land use and urban planning. The findings emphasize the critical importance of a comprehensive health-centric approach to city design, improved governance and management practices, community involvement, and political commitment to prioritize health in urban planning. Furthermore, the results proved a strong correlation between prioritizing public health in urban planning practices and residents' satisfaction with the city's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In conclusion, it is necessary to consider public health as a priority in urban planning practices and as a need for all stakeholders to work towards a healthier and more equitable urban environment.

Characterisation of urban environment and activity across space and time using street images and deep learning in Accra.

The urban environment influences human health, safety and wellbeing. Cities in Africa are growing faster than other regions but have limited data to guide urban planning and policies. Our aim was to use smart sensing and analytics to characterise the spatial patterns and temporal dynamics of features of the urban environment relevant for health, liveability, safety and sustainability. We collected a novel dataset of 2.1 million time-lapsed day and night images at 145 representative locations throughout the Metropolis of Accra, Ghana. We manually labelled a subset of 1,250 images for 20 contextually relevant objects and used transfer learning with data augmentation to retrain a convolutional neural network to detect them in the remaining images. We identified 23.5 million instances of these objects including 9.66 million instances of persons (41% of all objects), followed by cars (4.19 million, 18%), umbrellas (3.00 million, 13%), and informally operated minibuses known as tro tros (2.94 million, 13%). People, large vehicles and market-related objects were most common in the commercial core and densely populated informal neighbourhoods, while refuse and animals were most observed in the peripheries. The daily variability of objects was smallest in densely populated settlements and largest in the commercial centre. Our novel data and methodology shows that smart sensing and analytics can inform planning and policy decisions for making cities more liveable, equitable, sustainable and healthy.

[The municipal planning for the benefit of health].

The article, on the basis of analysis of scientific publications, presents brief overview of principles and technologies of development of cities considering impact on population health. The particular attention is paid to analysis of being built areas and careful use of available resources. The definition of the term "sustainable development of territory" and description of necessary measures for its application in practice are given. The actual trend of "coronavirus" transformation of architectural urban environment is presented, including availability for each family member of one's own space, room, house and flat with terrace, balcony, separate entrances (in case when apartment is located on the first floor), expanded house territory, life outside the city. At that, reduction of social relationships is established. To control effectiveness of city management corresponding indices are presented.

Effects of Urban Vibrancy on an Urban Eco-Environment: Case Study on Wuhan City.

In the context of rapid urbanisation and an emerging need for a healthy urban environment, revitalising urban spaces and its effects on the urban eco-environment in Chinese cities have attracted widespread attention. This study assessed urban vibrancy from the dimensions of density, accessibility, liveability, diversity, and human activity, with various indicators using an adjusted spatial TOPSIS (technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution) method. The study also explored the effects of urban vibrancy on the urban eco-environment by interpreting PM 2.5 and land surface temperature using "big" and "dynamic" data, such as those from mobile and social network data. Thereafter, spatial modelling was performed to investigate the influence of urban vibrancy on air pollution and temperature with inverted and extracted remote sensing data. This process identified spatial heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation. The majority of the dimensions, such as density, accessibility, liveability, and diversity, are negatively correlated with PM 2.5, thereby indicating that the advancement of urban vibrancy in these dimensions potentially improves air quality. Conversely, improved accessibility increases the surface temperature in most of the districts, and large-scale infrastructure construction generally contributes to the increase. Diversity and human activity appear to have a cooling effect. In the future, applying spatial heterogeneity is advised to assess urban vibrancy and its effect on the urban eco-environment, to provide valuable references for spatial urban planning, improve public health and human wellbeing, and ensure sustainable urban development.

Developing a Health-Spatial Indicator System for a Healthy City in Small and Midsized Cities.

A recent examination of the significant role of public health has prompted calls to re-investigate how the urban environment affects public health. A vital part of the solution includes Healthy City initiatives that have been the subject of extensive policies, implications, and practices globally. However, the existing literature mainly focuses on big cities and metropolitan areas, while investigations into small and midsized cities (SMCs) are lacking, and thus reflect the underlying issues of health inequity. This study develops an indicator system for evaluating Healthy City initiatives in SMCs, linking urban design and public health, supported by the analyzed opinions from experts collected using both questionnaires and interviews. The indicator system includes six primary dimensions and 37 variables: urban form and transportation (UFT); health-friendly service (HFS); environmental quality and governance (EQG); community and facility (CF); green and open space (GOS); and ecological construction and biodiversity (ECB). A fuzzy synthetic evaluation technique was used to assess the relative importance of factors, emphasizing the importance of UFT, HFS, and EQG, with importance indexes of 0.175, 0.174, and 0.174, respectively. This indicator system is helpful for SMCs seeking to construct a Healthy City in the future, and is based on urban design and governance inputs and for enhancing the Healthy City knowledge base of cities of varied scales.

The Contribution of MCDM to SUMP: The Case of Spanish Cities during 2006-2021.

Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP) are increasingly popular planning tools in cities with environmental issues where numerous actions are usually proposed to reduce pollution from urban transport. However, the diagnosis and implementation of these processes requires broad consensus from all stakeholders and the ability to fit them into urban planning in such a way that it allows the proposals to become realistic actions. In this study, a review of the sustainable urban mobility plans of 47 cities in Spain during the last 15 years has been carried out, analyzing both the diagnosis and proposal of solutions and their subsequent implementation. From the results obtained, a new framework based on a structured hybrid methodology is proposed to aid decision-making for the evaluation of alternatives in the implementation of proposals in SUMP. This hybrid methodology considers experts' and stakeholders' opinion and applies two different multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods in different phases to present two rankings of best alternatives. From that experience, an analysis based on the MCDM methods called 'Sequential Interactive Modelling for Urban Systems (SIMUS)' and weighted sum method (WSM) was applied to a case study of the city of Cartagena, a southeastern middle-size city in Spain. This analytic proposal has been transferred to the practical field in the SUMP of Cartagena, the first instrument of this nature developed after COVID-19 in Spain for a relevant city. The results show how this framework, based on a hybrid methodology, allows the development of complex decision mapping processes using these instruments without obviating the need to generate planning tools that can be transferred from the theoretical framework of urban reality.

COVID-19 and the compact city: Implications for well-being and sustainable urban planning.

This paper provides new evidence on the role of city planning, urban form, and built environment characteristics in health and well-being during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. Based on survey and geographic information systems (GIS) data from Oslo and Viken in Norway, the paper investigates changes in health and well-being due to COVID-19 and how the compact city and its characteristics relate to these changes. Findings indicate that self-reported measures of health and well-being worsened due to COVID-19. The most substantial changes were reported for life satisfaction, anxiety, and satisfaction with leisure, personal relationships, and vacations. General health, happiness, and satisfaction with income also declined during COVID-19 in comparison with pre-COVID-19 times. Overall, residents of compact neighborhoods reported lower well-being during COVID-19 compared to residents of lower-density neighborhoods. Important compact city characteristics - higher neighborhood density, reliance on public transport, smaller dwellings, and less green space - were negatively associated with well-being and health outcomes during COVID-19. In contrast, another compact city attribute, the presence of numerous local facilities, was positively linked to well-being and health during COVID-19. Based on these findings, the paper presents possible implications for sustainable urban planning and compact cities.

Smart Tree: An Architectural, Greening and ICT Multidisciplinary Approach to Smart Campus Environments.

At present, climate change, pollution, and uncontrolled urbanism threaten not only natural ecosystems, but also the urban environment. Approaches to mitigate these challenges and able to provide an alternative for the use of the space are deemed to be multidisciplinary, combining architecture, vegetation integration, circular economy and information and communications technologies (ICT). University campuses are a key scenario to evaluate such solutions as their student and research community is intrinsically willing to support these experiences and provide a wide knowledge on the fields necessary for their design and implementation. However, the creation of areas combining usability and sustainability is commonly lacking a multidisciplinary approach combining all these different perspectives. Hence, the present work aims to overcome this limitation by the development of a novel integrated approach for campus spaces for co-working and leisure, namely a "Smart Tree", where novel architecture, furniture design, flora integration, environmental sensoring and communications join together. To this end, a survey of the literature is provided, covering related approaches as well as general principles behind them. From this, the general requirements and constraints for the development of the Smart Tree area are identified, establishing the main interactions between the architecture, greening and ICT perspectives. Such requirements guide the proposed system design and implementation, whose impact on the environment is analyzed. Finally, the research challenges and lessons learned for their development are identified in order to support future works.

New urban models for more sustainable, liveable and healthier cities post covid19; reducing air pollution, noise and heat island effects and increasing green space and physical activity.

Cities are centres of innovation and wealth creation, but also hotspots of air pollution and noise, heat island effects and lack of green space, which are all detrimental to human health. They are also hotspots of COVID19. COVID19 has led to a rethink of urban public space. Therefore, is it time to re-think our urban models and reduce the health burden? We provide a narrative meta-review around a number of cutting edge and visionary urban models that that may affect health and that have been reported over the past few years. New urban concepts such as the Superblocks, the low traffic neighbourhood, 15 Minute city, Car free city or a mixture of these that may go some way in reducing the health burden related to current urban and transport practices. They will reduce air pollution and noise, heat island effects and increase green space and physical activity levels. What is still lacking though is a thorough evaluation of the effectiveness and acceptability of the schemes and the impacts on not only health, but also liveability and sustainability, although they are expected to be positive. Finally, the COVID19 pandemic may accelerate these developments and stimulus funding like the EU Next Generation funding should be used to make these changes.

Analysis and optimization of 15-minute community life circle based on supply and demand matching: A case study of Shanghai.

The 15-minute community life circle (15min-CLC) strategy is one of Shanghai's important methods for building a global city and facing a society with a more diverse population structure in the future. In the existing research, the balance between the construction of the life circle and the needs of the people in the life circle still needs to be further fulfilled. This paper is based on the city's multi-source large data set including 2018 AutoNavi POI (Point of Interests), OSM (OpenStreetMap) road network data and LandScan population data set, and evaluates the current status of Shanghai's 15min-CLC through the fusion of kernel density estimation, service area analysis and other statistical models and proposes relevant optimization suggestions. The results show that there are the following shortcomings: (1) From the perspective of different types of infrastructure service facilities, the spatial construction of Shanghai's overall life service facilities and shopping service facilities needs to be optimized. (2) From the perspective of comprehensive evaluation, the comprehensive service convenience of infrastructure service facilities in the downtown area is relatively high, while the comprehensive service convenience of urban infrastructure service facilities in the suburbs and outer suburbs is relatively low; The diversity of basic service facilities in the 15min-CLC in the downtown area is more consistent with the population distribution; However, in the peripheral areas of the urban area, too many infrastructure service facilities have been constructed. Based on the above shortcomings and the perspective of supply and demand matching, relevant optimization strategies are proposed in different regions and different types of infrastructure service facilities: (1) focus on the construction of basic service facilities in the urban fringe and urban-rural areas, improve the full coverage of the basic service facilities, and appropriately reduce the number of basic service facilities in the downtown area. (2) The development of community business models can be used to promote the development of new life service facilities and shopping service facilities. (3) Improve community medical institutions through facility function conversion, merger and reconstruction, etc. (4) Optimize the hierarchical basic service facility system and improve the population supporting facilities of basic service facilities in the 15min-CLC. This paper incorporates people's needs and concerns on the living environment into the 15min-CLC evaluation model, and uses Shanghai as an example to conduct research, summarizes the existing shortcomings, and proposes corresponding optimization strategies based on the matching of supply and demand. This article attempts to explore a replicable 15min-CLC planning model, so that it can be extended to the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, to provide reference for further research on the 15min-CLC, and to promote urban construction under the concept of sustainable development.

How can vegetation protect us from air pollution? A critical review on green spaces' mitigation abilities for air-borne particles from a public health perspective - with implications for urban planning.

Air pollution causes the largest death toll among environmental risks globally, but interventions to purify ambient air remain inadequate. Vegetation and green spaces have shown reductive effects on air-borne pollutants concentrations, especially of particulate matter (PM). Guidance on green space utilisation for air quality control remains scarce, however, as does its application in practise. To strengthen the foundation for research and interventions, we undertook a critical review of the state of science from a public health perspective. We used inter-disciplinary search strategies for published reviews on green spaces and air pollution in key scientific databases. Using the PRISMA checklist, we systematically identified reviews with quantitative analyses. For each of the presented PM mitigation mechanisms, we conducted additional searches focused on the most recent articles published between 2016 and early 2021. The included reviews differentiate three mitigation mechanisms of green spaces for PM: deposition, dispersion and modification. The most studied mechanism is deposition, particularly measures of mass and settling velocity of PM on plant leaves. We consolidate how green space setups differ by scale and context in their potentials to reduce peak exposures, stationary (point) or mobile (line) pollution sources, and the potentially most harmful PM components. The assessed findings suggest diverse optimisation options for green space interventions, particularly concerning plant selection, spatial setup, ventilation and maintenance - all alongside the consideration of supplementary vegetation effects like on temperature or water. Green spaces' reductive effects on air-borne PM concentrations are considerable, multi-mechanistic and varied by scale, context and vegetation characteristics. Such effect-modifying factors must be considered when rethinking public space design, as accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Weak linkages amid involved disciplines motivate the development of a research framework to strengthen health-oriented guidance. We conclude on an urgent need for an integrated and risk-based approach to PM mitigation through green space interventions.

Engaging Diverse Community Groups to Promote Population Health through Healthy City Approach: Analysis of Successful Cases in Western Pacific Region.

BACKGROUND: A substantial global burden of health can be attributed to unhealthy lifestyles and an unhealthy living environment. The concept of a Healthy City is continually creating and improving physical and social environments to enable healthy living. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the Healthy City concept would tackle the complexity of health by addressing the socio-economic and political determinants of health in the Western Pacific Region. METHODS: The SPIRIT model adopted by the Alliance for Healthy Cities can provide a framework for an integrated and holistic approach to enable policy, environment, social matters, behaviours, and bio-medical interventions to take their rightful place side by side. The performance of cities awarded by the AFHC was analysed under each domain of the SPIRIT model to show the efforts striving to acquire the qualities of a healthy city. FINDINGS: Two cities have incorporated the Healthy City concept in most of their policies outside the health sector, with a high level of commitment from city leaders and citizens, so the Health City activities were recognised as part of the means to advance the cityies' general planning. One city has made use of its strong network of key stakeholders from different sectors and disciplines to establish a "Medical-Social-Community' model. All three cities have collected health information to reflect health status, determinants of health and issues reflecting health promotion to enable the creation of a city health profile and show positive changes in health. The cities have engaged key stakeholders to launch a variety of health-promoting programmes according to the needs of the population. CONCLUSION: The AFHC can play an important role in linking the cities with strong action in Healthy City activities to support other cities in Healthy City development.

A city of cities: Measuring how 15-minutes urban accessibility shapes human mobility in Barcelona.

As cities expand, human mobility has become a central focus of urban planning and policy making to make cities more inclusive and sustainable. Initiatives such as the "15-minutes city" have been put in place to shift the attention from monocentric city configurations to polycentric structures, increasing the availability and diversity of local urban amenities. Ultimately they expect to increase local walkability and increase mobility within residential areas. While we know how urban amenities influence human mobility at the city level, little is known about spatial variations in this relationship. Here, we use mobile phone, census, and volunteered geographical data to measure geographic variations in the relationship between origin-destination flows and local urban accessibility in Barcelona. Using a Negative Binomial Geographically Weighted Regression model, we show that, globally, people tend to visit neighborhoods with better access to education and retail. Locally, these and other features change in sign and magnitude through the different neighborhoods of the city in ways that are not explained by administrative boundaries, and that provide deeper insights regarding urban characteristics such as rental prices. In conclusion, our work suggests that the qualities of a 15-minutes city can be measured at scale, delivering actionable insights on the polycentric structure of cities, and how people use and access this structure.

Simulations of scenarios for urban household water and energy consumption.

The expansion of cities and their impacts currently constitutes a challenge for the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). In this respect, assessments of resource consumption and the delivery of appropriate policies to support resource conservation are of paramount importance. Previous works in the literature have focused on one specific resource (e.g., water, energy, food) at the household level, while others have analysed the inter-relations among different resources (i.e., the nexus approach) at larger spatial scales (e.g., urban level). Moreover, household behavioural attitudes are generally excluded while assessing resource consumption scenarios. This work overcomes previous limitations by proposing a causal-loop structure derived from the literature, from which simulations of different scenarios can be generated that consider the nexus between food, energy and water at the household level. These simulations can provide alternative scenarios to assess the impacts of monetary policies as well as education and communication actions on the enhancement of resource savings and consider both their current use and household preferences. The metropolitan area of Napoli was chosen as the testbed area for the simulations. The results, in relation to the testbed, proved that communication actions would be most appropriate to increase the level of resource savings. The business-as-usual scenario was especially sensitive to variations in individual preferences towards pro-environmental behaviours and showed their higher impacts on the results. Improvements of this method and its derived scenarios in the context of the urban planning process could support the implementation of informed policies towards the conservation of key resources and promotion of sustainable citizen behaviour.

Access to Nature in a Post Covid-19 World: Opportunities for Green Infrastructure Financing, Distribution and Equitability in Urban Planning.

Covid-19 changed the way many people viewed and interacted with the natural environment. In the UK, a series of national lockdowns limited the number of places that individuals could use to support their mental and physical health. Parks, gardens, canals and other "green infrastructure" (GI) resources remained open and were repositioned as "essential infrastructure" supporting well-being. However, the quality, functionality and location of GI in urban areas illustrated a disparity in distribution that meant that in many cases communities with higher ethnic diversity, lower income and greater health inequality suffered from insufficient access. This paper provides commentary on these issues, reflecting on how planners, urban designers and environmental organizations are positioning GI in decision-making to address inequality. Through a discussion of access and quality in an era of austerity funding, this paper proposes potential pathways to equitable environmental planning that address historical and contemporary disenfranchisement with the natural environment in urban areas.

Prisons, Older People, and Age-Friendly Cities and Communities: Towards an Inclusive Approach.

This original and ground-breaking interdisciplinary article brings together perspectives from gerontology, criminology, penology, and social policy to explore critically the nature and consequences of the lack of visibility of prisons, prisoners, and ex-prisoners within global research, policy and practice on age-friendly cities and communities (AFCC), at a time when increasing numbers of people are ageing in prison settings in many countries. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose challenges in the contexts both of older peoples' lives, wellbeing, and health, and also within prison settings, and thus it is timely to reflect on the links between older people, prisons, and cities, at a time of ongoing change. Just as there is an extensive body of ongoing research exploring age-friendly cities and communities, there is extensive published research on older people's experiences of imprisonment, and a growing body of research on ageing in the prison setting. However, these two research and policy fields have evolved largely independently and separately, leading to a lack of visibility of prisons and prisoners within AFCC research and policy and, similarly, the omission of consideration of the relevance of AFCC research and policy to older prisoners and ex-prisoners. Existing checklists and tools for assessing and measuring the age-friendliness of cities and communities may be of limited relevance in the context of prisons and prisoners. This article identifies the potential for integration and for cross-disciplinary research in this context, concluding with recommendations for developing inclusive research, policies, and evaluation frameworks which recognise and include prisons and older prisoners, both during and after incarceration.