Children’s daily movement is shaped by how residential open spaces are designed. Our findings show that small spatial adjustments—such as connected pathways, flexible play zones, and improved visibility—can significantly enhance children’s physical activity. These insights help cities create healthier living environments.
The built food environment has a significant influence on population health, for better and for worse. Evidence shows that urban planning can play a major role in creating food environments that support healthy food choices; however current transit-oriented developments have not yet considered access to healthy food outlets. We found evidence that a high proportion (79 – 84%) of food outlets could be classified as ‘unhealthy’ across eight transport hubs identified for accelerated development in New South Wales.
Our study explores how perceptions of urban green space quality and accessibility relate to loneliness in urban India. Findings show that subjective experiences, design features, and feelings of social exclusion shape engagement with green spaces. Inclusive, safe, and emotionally responsive green space design is crucial for reducing loneliness.Important to note; our study advances urban health and planning research by demonstrating that loneliness is shaped more by perceived quality and emotional experience of green spaces than by their physical presence alone.
Considering the increase in loneliness and isolation, and importance of creating inclusive communities, this study explored older adults’ social participation needs, facilitators and barriers during a downtown revitalization. Findings highlighted the signification of inclusive environments, and importance of accessibility to activities and resources, affordable transportation and housing, and information about participation opportunities.
The high concentration of people and activities in cities makes them vulnerable to various stressors such as natural and man-made disasters. In the recent pandemic, the cities are the places where the transmission started. We investigated the impact of social, economic, and environmental indicators on the rate of COVID-19 disease in the neighborhoods of Urmia City, Iran. Our results show that the number of employees, gross residential density, number of elderly people, building density, commercial density and road density have a significant relationship in predicting the epidemic.
The deterioration of the built environment, as well as poor traffic and pedestrian conditions, creates obstacles to active mobility, active ageing and functional abilities among older adults residing in heritage city cores. This has negative impacts on their social inclusiveness, quality of life and well-being. The walled city, which encompasses Jaipur’s heritage neighbourhood, is one of the few planned cities in India, extending back to the 18th century, and is considered a tourist attraction. With an in-depth study, we use Jaipur’s walled city to examine how supporting a better quality of life for an ageing population can have co-benefits for the tourism economy.
Air pollution is linked to a high risk of dementia. However, it is concerning that only two Latin American countries are studying this association. We wanted to establish whether the association has been described in this area of the world, how often it has been done and what policies have been generated from it to intervene.
How do children perceive and interpret different noises and how their personal experiences correlate with objective measurements? What are the long-term repercussions of sustained noise exposure during the formative years on adult cognition, behaviour, and health outcomes?
We examined the factors that limit and enable the uptake of healthy diets among urban populations with multiple socio-economic vulnerabilities. By exploring the interconnected economic, social and environmental influences, we aimed to generate context-specific evidence that can inform effective and targeted action to support progress towards achieving global nutrition targets in the context of triple burden of malnutrition and increasing concern on high incidences of diet-related diseases in rapidly urbanizing areas.
How do children experience and perceive the public space in their own neighborhood? And what are the environmental factors that encourage and hinder children from playing outside? In this article, Dutch children explain what they see as a play-friendly city.