We're delighted to launch the Preliminary Programme for the 4th Healthy City Design International Congress, which has been rescheduled to 30 November – 3 December 2020 and will now be held in a virtual setting over four days with more than 100 talks and workshops and 200 speakers from all over the world. In response both to the ongoing challenges faced by cities and communities and by the onset of the global pandemic, this year’s theme explores ‘Designing resilient communities: Recovery, renewal and renaissance’.
The postwar period has seen multiple organisations, governments and professions heading in non-sustainable, unhealthy directions – a trend that needs reversing with a sense of urgency, and through multidisciplinary collaboration. This, argued Healthy City Design keynote speaker Dan Burden, director of innovation and inspiration at Blue Zones, can only happen when a new, united approach is applied to city making.
Art and cultural activities can be thought of as multimodal health interventions, which combine lots of different components that are positive for people’s health. So said Dr Daisy Fancourt, Associate Professor of Psychobiology and Epidemiology at University College London, during a keynote talk at Healthy City Design that drilled deep into the detail about the influence of the arts on health.
The deadline for abstract submissions for the 4th Healthy City Design International Congress has been extended to 2 June. Resilience is not simply a big topic for the healthy city – the impact of COVID-19 means it is now the burning question of the day. At HCD 2020, we’ll look at the resilient city from many angles – from creating more resilient homes, neighbourhoods, transport systems and workplaces, to the design decisions that underscore more resilient placemaking and urban renewal.
With human and planetary health under increasing stresses, urban planners need to create more comprehensive theories and tools for action to support city resilience and the wellbeing of citizens – but it’s vital to learn from history and the consequences of earlier thinking. So said Mark W Johnson, a landscape architect and founding principal of Civitas, in a stirring keynote at the Healthy City Design 2019 congress.
Music is the most under-recognised, undervalued, under-utilised asset on the planet, and it isn’t being used to its full potential. This was Julia Jones’ opening salvo at Health City Design 2019, as she delivered a keynote on the power of music to help improve health and wellbeing, and become part of a city’s utopian vision.
