LA livable city is a dynamic, organic network of urban villages: Eco-communities of nature, places, people, institutions, cultures, and commerce that enable the present generation to flourish without compromising capabilities and opportunities for future generations. Building livable cities requires knowledge, strategies, and practices that address challenges of place, people, communities, citizenship, and prosperity.
Cities Alive takes a human-centred approach to rethinking how we should design and manage cities in the future. It provides an integrated focus on the experience of cities and the global challenges that are impacting the lives of everyday citizens. We recognize the importance of a city’s inhabitants and we explore the relationships between design, processes, spaces and people. Cities Alive is an invitation to collaboratively shape our urban future.
Central to this quest is to create equitable, healthier cities for sustainable development. A focus on urban health not only recognizes global demographic trends but the inextricable and inter-dependent links between health, economic productivity, social stability and inclusion, climate change and healthy environments, and an enabling built environment and governance. With half of the anticipated world’s population that will live in cities in 2050 not yet born or living there, we must seize the opportunity to create health systems and environments that enable improved health outcomes and livable cities.
At the core of the dynamic and transformative nature of cities are people – healthy people. In order to pursue this goal and the SDGs, we must ensure that all citizens and communities, regardless of income, social status, or gender, have access to the quality health services they need with sufficient financial protection.