Our study examines how school accessibility, neighbourhood income, and ethnic composition jointly influence children’s propensity for active school travel in Auckland. We identify culturally specific patterns and spatial clusters, offering evidence to guide targeted policies for more equitable walking commutes.
We conducted a natural experimental study of Amsterdam’s city-wide 30 km/h policy.. When cities reduce traffic speeds, people move and connect more. Amsterdam’s city-wide 30 km/h limit increased children cycling by 86% and social interactions among adults by 75% on intervention streets, showing that speed limits can shape healthier, more connected cities.
The elderly should be able to travel and have fun like everyone else and use urban spaces easily, and on this basis, it is necessary to identify dimensions of an age-friendly city that provides the possibility of planning for such environments. We present an approach of bringing the WHO Age-Friendly City framework into urban planning strategic decision-making by using the AIDA (Analysis of Interconnected Decision Areas) model.
Urban environments and public spaces play a crucial role in shaping mental health, life satisfaction, and social connections. Most studies have mainly looked at cities as a general category, but we still don’t fully understand how different kinds of public spaces affect people’s mental well-being. We try to fill that gap by looking at seven types of urban spaces to find out which ones help people feel better mentally.
Rates of adolescent mental ill-health have risen sharply in recent decades. Urban parks are valuable mental health resources, yet the mental wellbeing needs of adolescents are often overlooked. I show that by examining planners’ perspectives on why this gap exists helps to illuminate concrete actions and strategies to ensure parks can be healthier and more accessible for all.
Public parks shape how people meet, stay, and interact. This study shows how specific physical features of an urban park influence everyday social life, offering practical lessons for designing public spaces that support social interaction, wellbeing, and inclusive urban vitality. We combined on-site observation of people’s behaviour with surveys of park users and spatial analysis. We did this to move beyond abstract design principles and provide evidence-based insights into how seating, pathways, land use, inclusiveness, and safety shape everyday social interactions in public spaces.
Verhalenhuis Belvédère demonstrates how community-led, culturally rooted public spaces bolster neighbourhood resilience during urban renewal by combining participatory co-creation, flexible programming, recognition, and memory work. More broadly, examples like this show how a socio-spatial triad—spatial agency, networked solidarity, and identity grounding—can help protect neighbourhood identity and strengthen lasting social infrastructure in diverse communities.
Green infrastructure has been conceived as something for the well-off in cities of developed countries. How green infrastructure contributes to quality of life and wellbeing in slums and informal settlements is largely unknown. A survey of the residents (sample size = 455) within a slum community (Ikorodu-Ajegunle) in Lagos, Nigeria. The survey was preceded by stakeholder forum where actors from health, urbanism, environmental sectors discussed the links and made inputs to the research instrument used for data collection.
Cities urgently need systemic health checks. Without them, they keep fixing symptoms, wasting scarce budgets, while hidden risks grow. This proposed approach helps cities understand their true health and activate their self-healing capacity instead of constantly firefighting.
Intertwining play and placemaking (‘PlaysMaking’) in Cork city has inspired positive changes in the spaces, places and lives of citizens. The barriers of high car dependence and a history of resistance to pedestrianisation policies in the city were overturned by levering play to temporarily pedestrianise areas in the city. Community led PlaysMaking in Cork City has secured the permanent pedestrianisation of public roads, creating inclusive recreational spaces and led to the creation of dedicated public spaces for popup events and playful cultural trails.