HEART’s integrated approach aims to systematically improve urban health and reduce health disparities. Through innovative Blue-Green Solutions based implementation mechanisms of urban planning, this project embraces and promotes health and well-being as a key-planning criterion. As opposed to the current, profit-driven urban planning paradigm, HEART will introduce and pursue this integrated cost-efficient health-centered concept.
The world is changing dramatically and cities face major social, geopolitical, economic and climate challenges that affect the quality of our lives. It became evident that we can no longer base our urban planning solely on profit-based criteria and commercial interests, but make changes in the direction of more sustainable, inclusive urban planning that will take into account the regeneration and restoration of natural resources and the needs of all citizens, especially vulnerable groups. Additionally, the sectoral approach to planning often overlooks the interrelationships and synergistic potentials of the diverse elements of urban metabolism, which further reduces the quality of life in cities.
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The aim of the discussion of gathered experts and representatives of relevant institutions is to include these perspectives in the public dialogue on planning more sustainable, healthier and happier cities and to find ways to balance unbalanced relations that in modern urban environments cause different types of social distortions that cause stress and dissatisfaction. on the health and well-being of citizens.
Experts from the international projects Clever Cities, euPOLIS and HEART, which offer innovative solutions in the field of participatory urban planning and implementation of nature-inspired urban interventions, and specialists on gender equality and public health invite representatives of city institutions and the event participants to think together “out of the box” and open space for improving the planning process, by identifying concrete steps towards the institutionalization of these criteria in our urban practice and procedures.