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The Barcelona Institute for International Well being (ISGlobal) has unveiled a brand new software: the Wholesome City Design Index (HUDI). The HUDI is a composite index that evaluates 917 European cities based mostly on 13 indicators related to peoples’ well being and well-being and divided into 4 domains: city design, sustainable transport, environmental high quality and inexperienced area accessibility.
The HUDI is the results of scientific work revealed in The Lancet Planetary Well being. The information for all cities is publicly obtainable on https://isglobalranking.org/hudi/.
So as to make the cities comparable, they’ve been grouped into 5 classes in keeping with the variety of inhabitants: massive metropolitan, metropolitan, medium and small-sized cities and small cities.
The 13 indicators assessed embody city compactness, housing density, strolling, biking and public transport infrastructures, air air pollution ranges, capability to mitigate and handle warmth, and accessibility of inexperienced areas. The index assigns a rating between 0 and 10 for every of the symptoms analyzed and establishes a mixed HUDI rating.
Small cities lead the HUDI
Typically, the class with the best HUDI scores is small-sized cities, which incorporates all European cities with a inhabitants between 50,000 and 200,000 inhabitants. Pamplona (Spain), Geneva (Switzerland) and Harlow (UK), all small-sized cities, lead the HUDI scoring throughout all classes with scores of 6.8, 6.65 and 6.64, respectively.
“The HUDI score differences are often only very small. However, the HUDI shows tendencies and none of the 917 cities achieves a score of 7 or higher out of 10, which gives us an idea of the room for improvement in promoting health and well-being through urban design in Europe,” explains Federica Montana, researcher at ISGlobal and lead writer of the research.
Giant metropolitan cities typically scored higher on indicators of city design (housing density, compactness, mid-rise growth and permeability) and sustainable transport (strolling and biking alternatives and variety of public transport stops), notably these in Northern Europe and a few in Spain.
In distinction, smaller cities present higher environmental high quality (air air pollution, inexperienced area and decrease city warmth island results), with larger scores on higher air high quality and warmth mitigation indicators, notably in Northern Europe.
Variations between Western and Japanese Europe
“One of the trends we observed is that the lowest HUDI scores tended to be concentrated in Eastern European countries such as Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. Conversely, it is in Western European cities, with notable concentrations in the UK, Spain and Sweden that we find the highest scoring cities,” says Natalie Mueller, ISGlobal researcher and co-author of the research.
Not a last rating
“The HUDI is not intended to be a final ranking of cities, but rather a first approach using only open spatial data to see how European cities of all sizes perform and compare in terms of providing a healthy urban design to their residents,” says Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, director of ISGlobal’s Local weather, Air Air pollution, Nature and City Well being program.
“Cities of similar size often face similar challenges and opportunities and providing a high spatial resolution of the indicators and combined HUDI scores can help to pinpoint problems and develop targeted intervention strategies. Our HUDI is a work in progress and we invite the research, urban planning and policy communities to develop this work further in the future and make other relevant indicators available,” Nieuwenhuijsen provides.
Prime cities by class
The cities with one of the best HUDI scoring in every class are Madrid (Spain), with a rating of 6.04 in massive metropolitan cities; Lisbon (Portugal), with a rating of 6.09 in metropolitan cities; Bilbao (Spain), with a rating of 6.35, in medium-sized cities; Pamplona (Spain), with a rating of 6.8, in small-sized cities; and Campobasso (Italy), with a rating of 6.02, within the small cities cluster.
Methodology
The Wholesome City Design Index assesses 917 cities from 26 European nations, together with the UK, and it has been developed utilizing open information sources, together with distant sensing information, OpenStreetMap and EU and authorities open datasets.
The workforce outlined 13 indicators that scientific proof hyperlinks to bodily and/or psychological well being and grouped them into 4 key domains: city design, sustainable transport, environmental high quality and accessibility to inexperienced area. For every of the symptoms, a reference worth was outlined based mostly on earlier research or suggestions from consultants or worldwide organizations.
For instance, for the air air pollution indicators, the suggestions of the annual common values of particulate matter PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) established by the WHO had been used as a reference. For these indicators for which there was no reference worth, the worth of the town with one of the best consequence was used as a reference.
As soon as the info for all of the cities had been obtained for every of the 13 indicators, they had been in contrast with the goal worth and transformed to a rating between 0 and 10 relying on the consequence. The HUDI scores had been calculated by making use of weights to the 13 indicators and had been subsequently used to rank cities inside their respective metropolis clusters.
The workforce hopes to enhance the HUDI sooner or later by together with different related indicators within the context of city well being, resembling socioeconomic indicators, transport modal share, or entry to and variety of companies and facilities.
“The use of all open source data is an important first step. We are making the codes available and hope that cities can use the evidence to understand the links between urban planning and health. The HUDI helps cities not only see the indicators at the city level but also at high spatial resolution, which is important for equity as there can be large differences across neighborhoods,” says Carolyn Daher, co-author of the research and coordinator of the ISGlobal City Planning, Atmosphere and Well being Initiative.
“The HUDI is a useful tool and also a call to action for cities to look at the data and distributions, and use their own data to validate findings, define targeted intervention strategies, and contribute with better data to improve the indicators and mapping in the near future,” concludes Mueller.
Extra info:
Federica Montana, et al. Constructing a Wholesome City Design Index (HUDI): how one can promote well being and sustainability in European cities, The Lancet Planetary Well being (2025).
Directions for accessing the HUDI web site:
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