UN-Habitat Arena - Healthy and Caring Cities in Action (WUF13)

Jobs Longle.
Langleis.
Hello.
Sash.
Okay.
So I invite you to take annex.
Thank you.
We are missing one.
We find Did you check the records? This is the you are the first one, so this is.
Yes.
So good morning and thank you so much for inviting me to this.
No, I'm so sorry.
So, sorry.
No, no, I felt like you are the first one to be.
Yeah, Vanessa is very say it's 1030 already.
Okay.
Very well.
Good morning to you all.
Great, great to see you all.
At least we have some audience.
I know a couple of events are having a struggle with that, but here we are with you.
Welcome to today's session, the Healthy and Caring Cities in action.
My name is Juma Aciago.
I'm a program management officer leading Housing and Human Security in the AUN habitat.
Mine is just to really get to moderate this session today.
We have at least an hour to discuss and unpack this topical area with this very distinguished set of panelists whom you see from behind who they are and where they come from.
I'm not going to spend much time to try to ask them to introduce themselves.
What I'll only do is I want to just start by with something that sounds very simple but has profound consequences on how we plan cities planning cities.
I think from day one, the big question has been about the global housing crisis, and the big question is, what is the plan? So here you are now starting from the point of your, your health.
Your health, as we understand it, is shaped less by your genes and less by your individual choices than by where you actually live.
It's important I just try to set this context right.
Whether your home is safe and dry, whether there's a pack your children can use, whether your caregiver has somewhere to go for support, or whether she simply has just no choice, you know, but to carry the burden alone.
This is all connected to the planning system.
And we have known this for decades, decades.
We've known this issue for decades.
And yet, for too long, we have treated homes and housing as a real estate issue, as a matter of simple provision of shelter.
But also, we have looked at issues of health very sectorally just as a problem of the ministries of health.
And we have also looked at care as just something that is private, a private family matter.
Now, for you and Habit at where we sit, we are at the intersection of these three aspects, housing, health, care.
And our mandate is adequate housing for all adequate housing for all, which is also about a neighborhood and where people can live.
The cities for people rather than the people for cities.
So I now want to turn to the five of you to help me build this narrative.
And in the next 60 minutes or less than 60 minutes now, we're going to move through three layers.
We're going to start with the cities in action.
We have some powerful city here with Vanessa from Bogota, where care has been built into the fabric of the city.
I saw this last year.
Beautiful.
Then we move to evidence and ground truth.
Dip Ska, who's here also, will give us the voice of young people, which has been very strong in this forum.
And she will be talking about the urban health issues in India.
And then we'll turn to Celia, who will show us what data says.
We always say evidence to inform our actions.
She will give us what data says, including from our own urban health scan that we did across pilot cities.
And finally, finally, we zoom out to the C 40 movement and the WHO.
Helen and Natalie will help us answer some of the hardest questions, and I hope you will ask even more hard questions of how do we go from two compelling city stories to systemic change across hundreds of cities? We are actually approaching adequate housing for all with housing as a system.
And before I hand over, this room here matters.
You matter.
This is called an arena because it's much more informal.
It's not just a stage, but it's really a space for exchange.
And we have amongst us here, I believe, practitioners, researchers, perhaps even city representatives.
I believe as you ask your question, you will also get a chance to introduce yourself and you will talk to us about also your tools, your partnerships as you interact with the panelists.
So without further ado, I want to turn to Vanessa, who is a secretary.
Of habitat for Bogota in 7 minutes, what has Bogota built and what have you learned? Okay.
Thank you so much for the invitation to the panel and of course, for giving me the chance to present, at least to discuss what is what we are doing in Bogota related with healthcare and cities.
I don't know.
I have a presentation, if it's possible, just some slides for guidance.
Thank you.
Yeah, that will put it on.
Okay.
So basically, I think that for us, the current Mayor administration, what we have is a way to understand how to continue one word that was developed in the previous administration and also is iconic in both that is that Manzana El do.
I basically have a crossing with other aspects that the city is needed.
For the first time, we are doing the transport infrastructure and infrastructure that the city needs to follow.
Then the question that we did is how to connect both things.
Basically, the way that we see that is that how can cities can deliver integrated housing, basic services, and care infrastructure and transport infrastructure? That's the question that we have those days.
So I think that for some particular context, data, I know that maybe some of you know about the Bogota case, but in particular, some data that nowadays I think are relevant.
75% of caregivers in Bogota are women.
So for us, continue the legacy and the idea to working for women and for caring is something that is relevant.
But also, we already have 4.4 USD dollar million that had been given through this strategy, and we don't want to that this strategy will be not integrated to the rest of the city and infrastructure that we are nowadays working in.
Basically, The strategy have already support almost 1 million or inhabitants in Bogota, this Masana Equita strategy.
What we want to know this how to connect this with the scale of metropolitan infrastructure that nowadays we are doing in Bogota and also with housing because what we found is that housing as a plan in this particular administration and that is the plan Miks in Bogota is a pillar for the whole urban transformation, economic recovery, but also families.
Basically what you have here is the 26 and Masan' acquittal connected with the different programs that we have in housing.
So our effort was to not only give subsidies to support the demand of the families, was also to give subsidies that could be articulated with the Manzana acquit infrastructure, but also with the Metro BRT and cable stations infrastructure.
So as part of the depetary the way to vocalize the subsidies was using this territorial strategy, but also we already prioritize care given our care families and also women as a main population for the allocation of subsidies in the different housing programs.
And I think that just to mention that and I think that this number is relevant when I explain the Bogota case because Bogota yearly produce almost 28,000 affordable housing units yearly.
That's basically the average of Bogota.
In this administration, that is two years and a half, we have given 30,000 subsidies for acquisition, home improvement, and rental.
Saying that only for acquisition, we have been supporting 20,000 units.
That means that the 50% of the total production of affordable housing in Bogota is supported by the housing plan Nas and Bogota of the administration.
And what is important to say that because 65% of the total beneficiaries of this population are women.
And also are particularly women that are connected with the desire, and I think an idea.
Basically, there's another aspect that I would like to mention.
One of the things that are linked to housing and women connected with care is that the mortgage and the possibility to obtain a loan for housing or a mortgage is something that is behind 12% less than a male household family.
So basically what we did is to prioritize women and also women that are part of this CRE strategy in the way that they can have mortgage in a faster way.
As a result, I think that as you say there, 65% of the total beneficiaries of the housing programs that are connected with the supporting the mortgage strategy are women and are connected with the current strategy.
So my point here is that what we are committed to continue the strategy of the Mansan' Edal but link it in a faster way with the infrastructure that is needed in Bogota and the transport strategy, and of course, the housing plan as part of the strategy that needs to be connected with the Mansanas Aquital as I said before, 16,500 women are already beneficiaries of this plan and also because they are prioritizing the way not only in the strategy of being articulated with Manzana Cal, because we are committed that women are part of the strategy for being part of the plan Mis and Bogota.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Vanessa.
I hope you guys remember that name Manzana de.
Public health facilities.
The blocks.
Now, I'm sure in your mind, some of you are asking also from the cities you come from, how do I take this to my city? And perhaps has Vanessa successfully been able to tell me how I can get started in discussing with either my mayor or my city authorities on how to adopt a similar concept? Maybe just a follow through question to Vanessa.
Is this more a political choice, financial choice, or is it a technical choice, or is it all the three? Well, I think it's the three of them, but I think it's a caring decision.
And it's basically put the care strategy in the center of the city was the decision that was made for the city in the past.
And our strategy is that how to connect that care strategy with the catch up of the infrastructure and the transport infrastructure and the housing that is needed nowadays in the city.
So I think that The aspects that could be relevant.
First of all, is understanding that Masanao is a strategy to put the care in the center of the conversation of the city, but also is a management and budgeting strategy that is behind it.
Is that there is not only programs that are also decisions about how to connect investments in one place that are going to be linked to the care of public facilities.
That's the first one.
The second one is that is not only to be part of an effective strategy for presenting the care in the middle of the conversation, is how to be effective and connected with the other facilities and needed of women that are linked that are part of the care strategy.
And that's the reason because I'm saying that for us, prioritizing housing subsidies for this population and these areas that are in the surrounding area of the Manzana Equido was one of the things that aims to move on in the housing plan.
And basically, I think that as option is like, how to move on this on time? Because I think that that will be an interesting question, and I think that since this policy was oriented to be part of the car in the conversation not only for the facilities, but also as a society as atan society and the strategy, I think that community is already asking for that.
So basically, that's the result, I think.
Excellent.
Excellent, Vanessa.
I think as we look at this, we also want to now interrogate the evidence.
And I think we have with us Dipsica who really from a young person's perspective, talks to how communities are engaged, how communities become part of the solution, and through her Initiative, the Young Game Changers Initiative, She has been able to work with UN Habitat in India, but also connected to Senegal and Colombia to do exactly that, putting youth at the center of urban health action, participatory planning, and community led change.
Dipsa is here to show us what that looks like on the ground over to you.
Good morning, everyone.
Sorry, just to in there is translation.
For those of you who want to use your translation devices, they're right at that end.
Sorry, Dsika.
Please go ahead.
Okay.
Good morning, everyone.
I'm Devsika Rai.
I'm from dn, Young Game Changer, India.
Today, I'm presenting our project to you.
Today, I'm speak about not only tanney, we are speaking about all the young game changers are in Janey because we are don't fluent in English, so I can always talk about Hindi and my local language, a.
But in our even Hatan we can always speak about English.
For mine, this might be very difficult, but I try my best A journey is not a data point where I live, because I live in very intermittent city, so I cannot about anything.
I can know about what is survey, I can know about what is the data collection.
I can know about what is the health awareness for this is all of my it is new.
So I am 24-years-old, but I am going to 20 kilometers from Bouso.
But there is journey.
There is very small city where I live.
Because journey is a beginning.
It is clearly for separated.
First is our drainage issue.
Our drainage issue is very our monsoon because it's sore.
Whenever drainage it so it is fed off, so we can go to the municipality and clearly mention them.
Then second is our public space prevention with health awareness.
Then third is our tobacco awareness.
Our tobacco awareness is one of the most highlighting awareness of whole health program.
Because we did also urban governments problem.
So the government said that tobacco urness is necessary in Gertney.
So we did, yes, it is very necessary in Gertney.
Third slide, we can choose youth in door to door.
We can go door to door for our campaign.
So in first thing, we can choose we cannot about myself, we cannot about yourself.
For here, we can choose people who talks more loud than all.
So first, we can make sense to question at them.
First, we can question what makes you feel safe.
Then the answer was very unexpected.
People told about the dad scratches, people told about homes schools are very dangerous because there are some tobacco in the nearby the schools.
So then our second question is, what makes you wrecks? What makes you sick? So the answer is people about open waste, people told about poor hygienic condition.
So we can know the journey is very poor about health awareness.
So we can go to third question, how make you feel live here comfortably? So their answer is very particularly for said they're working for a toilet because journey has no only have a public toilet.
So they are working as a freeze do for governance work as you inhabit and so we can do two public space.
Converted with two public space.
Oh, sorry, I can forget my slide.
So first is our tobacco free zone.
The municipality legals.
We can install our tobacco free zones around our schools, around colony so that urban planning rules also public health.
Then second is Tata Memorial Hospitals.
They help the cancer awareness into Ward seven.
I mentioned, Warde is a municipality.
There has been many people who conservation tobacco more than anywhere.
So that made me health information more local to visible and accessible.
Then third is our health hygienic awareness.
Through the Young Game Changer lab, we can start remaining youth leader for peer to peer awareness.
So the programs are many things are colonies and locals.
Not only one lab, we can go through the peoples and collecting more data for people to people.
For fourth is our two public spaces where I mentioned it properly.
One is example I am most proud of you that what we got, we got 2,700 votes.
That is more hues about I can sit in Jutany.
So fifth is our Jutany Iwasakti.
Any I Sati is a registered club right now that we have and work one project cycle because in near governance.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dave Shaker.
Brilliant.
And it's really good to show that intersection between housing and health, bringing the issues of drainage, public space, and the link with tobacco.
I think you've done pretty good and how you've accentuated the role of young people more than just a data point.
Thank you.
Will probably want to ask a follow up question to you in this World Uban forum full of mayors, full of UN agencies.
What is that one single thing young people would like to highlight based on your initiative and linked to this whole conversation? In our city, young people are very enthusiasm.
No opportunity.
So where I am coming because there are no many have a spoken English facility.
They have no our local buses.
There are even to transport problem also.
So I can request it all for to do more about oney because outney is a very good city.
Outney is a health hub.
Journey is a university.
Utney very much university, so I can tell him that young people are more grateful for Janey.
Thank you very much, Tip Shaka.
This is really insightful from a bottom up perspective.
Don't you think so? So now I turn to more of the technical people here, those who carry out scans, health scans, and I think I have here Celia.
Celia from the healthy cities.
She told me not to call it something else.
Healthy Cities.
They have been implementing the Urban health scan across several countries, giving cities an honest, evidence based picture of what is actually happening at the city and neighborhood level, evidence to action.
So she measures more than just conventional health statistics, and she'll tell us more about that.
What does the scan show, Celia? What is the what is the single finding from the scan that every city in this room should know? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Numa.
I may also stand up to see the presentation so that I don't turn all the time.
Well, thank you very much.
Good morning, everybody.
We are very happy to be here today.
I'm representing the Healthy Cities team, which is a proud partner of UN Habitat.
I'm going to share the results of a project that we've done together with the Urban Health team for the last couple of months, which is the Urban Health Quick scan.
But before sharing the resource, I just wanted to reflect a bit on the idea of why do we need healthy cities? Why do we talk about healthy cities? So the evidence tells us that almost 90% of our health depends on things that are out of the clinical space such as genetics, environment, social circumstances, et cetera.
So we think that urban planning should serve cities should serve as a tool for health and the other way, health should serve as a tool for urban planning, right? We like to remind ourselves that just as a safe city is not a city full of police, a healthy city is not a city full of hospitals, right? So a healthy city should be promoting health and well being in a more holistic way.
So this is very simple.
Planning impacts directly health.
So this has an economic implication also.
Better health means saving on medical expenses also.
So for that, we've developed the Healthy Cities Generator.
This is a tool, a digital tool that lets you understand the links between urban planning and health.
We've developed this tool for over ten years, doing a lot of research, a lot of literature review to understand this link with the support also of partners such as UN Habitat or WHO.
And This is the interface of the tool.
It is a very easy to use tool, flexible, adaptable.
You don't need complex data to use it, and it is tailor made for urban practitioners, governments, urban planners, et cetera.
So to identify the health needs, the urban challenges, and then to be able to prioritize urban actions in different contexts.
And we can also quantify the impact on different health indicators and on economic savings.
I bring here two examples of projects that we've done previously.
This is an evaluation that we did for a project in a city next to Barcelona where they were implementing some strategies to increase green coverage, biking lanes, pedestrian areas.
And we saw that these represented a decrease on cardiovascular diseases and things such as depression, and that could also lead to a potential saving of 20 million euros per year, which was about 218 euros per year per person.
Then this is another example for the City of Bradford, where we did the analysis of an existing plan that they were implementing for the transformation of the urban center.
And here we saw the figures told us that they could save up to 42 million pounds, in this case, and this helped them mobilize up to 200 million pounds to keep investing in projects where health was brought at the center of design.
So here we have the Unavta Urban Health Scan.
This is, as I said, a joint initiative with the Urban health team with the idea to empower cities to use urban planning as a driver for positive public health.
It was to provide cities with the understanding of how urban environments affected health so that they could also prioritize actions for the future development of their cities.
But also the idea behind this initiative was to test the tool and the methodology in other contexts because we were applying this mainly on a European level, and Aviat saw that this was working at this context.
So the idea was to try to scale this, replicate it in other contexts so that we can also adapt it to other realities also.
These were the cities where we did the scan, the cities for the first round, cities in Latin America, Africa and Asia Pacific.
So for the scan, it was a basic preliminary assessment.
We did two kinds of assessment.
On one side, the baseline assessment, which is the evaluation of an existing context, which can be a neighborhood or a city, for instance.
What we do for this quick scan is that we first identify which are the health priorities of this area, and then we analyze also the urban environment.
So we look at things such as density, mobility, green infrastructure, housing or energy.
And then with this, we use the tool, Hey cities generator.
So we get some priorities on the urban determinants, on the urban interventions that we should address to improve the health indicators of this context.
This is an example of Freetown where we did the assessment of the central business district.
Here, we identified that they had some positive assets such as the connectivity within the area, proximity to public services, and the high density of economic activity.
But there was the need to improve walkability, to reduce traffic, have a better green infrastructure like connected and diverse, and some policies also for better housing quality.
On the other side, we have the plan assessment, which we did for the city of Bangkok.
What we do in this case is that we analyze the plan and how it changes each of the urban determinants of health.
So aspects such as density, mobility, green infrastructure, et cetera, And then with this, we can understand the impact that it has on different indicators of health and economic savings.
So this is an example of the plan that was being implemented in a district in Bangkok in Hakwang where there was a very strong performance in things such as variety, active mobility, blue green corridors.
But there was a need to improve in terms of traffic, proximity to public spaces or policies for housing quality and energy efficiency measures.
And these were some of the figures that came out from this scan in Bangkok.
So there was some impact on life expectancy, for instance, that was improving the life expectancy up to two months per person.
It was improving quality of life as well, and there were also some economic savings that could lead to save more than 20% of their healthcare cost.
And then, well, there were some reflections after this quick scan on how to bring the scan into action, let's say, into a healthier cities.
So there is on one side to try to deploy the full potential of urban health with different strategies like providing a more in depth diagnosis strategy for urban health plan, et cetera.
Yes.
And then I will just finish with this.
As I said at the beginning, the idea is to also try to adapt this methodology to other realities, other contexts.
So also to extend the urban health research and adapt the tool to different contexts.
So that's it.
Thank you.
Excellent, Celia.
Celia shows, yes, that we have the evidence and she can go on and on and on.
But at least what you need to know is that there's this healthy cities generator.
Perhaps you need to look more at what that is in terms of how it's helping us to use data to drive real change.
Now, from there, we also have heard before from Vanessa.
We have the city model, we've heard from DSickk We have the willingness of the population, including the young people to help city authorities to drive this change.
The question is, how do we do it everywhere? How do we scale this up? That is what our next two speakers will help us unpack.
How do we make this truly a global effort among cities using the power of networks? And to start us off, we will look at one very important network, the C 40 movement, which is working with hundreds of the world's largest cities on climate action.
Celia's evidence also shows the intersection and link between climate and issues to do with health, which are inseparable.
And increasingly, C 40 is working at that intersection.
So we have with us Helen Chtier who is going to help us show how this global network can accelerate it connecting cities to each other, to finance and to the political momentum.
So, Helen, from where C 40 sits, how does that acceleration look like? Thank you.
Hello, everyone.
I don't have any slides, so excuse me for this, but I hope I will be able to share a little bit with you what we are doing and how we contribute to this global momentum.
I'm En Chartier I'm the Director of Urban Planning and Design.
I come from the same lens as Celia in some way how urban planning and design can accelerate the transformation for good.
NC 40 is an organization that is focusing on accelerating climate action.
With Myers.
You will ask me, I think it's a very important question, why you come from climate and why you are interested in focusing on health.
I think that's very important because Myers and city, they don't work in silo.
They need to show the multiple co benefits of their actions.
They need to explain what they are doing is good in terms of inclusion, is good in terms of urban life because if you want to raise your family in a city, you need to make sure that they will live in a healthy environment.
It's also good for the planet and for the climate agenda that a lot of progressive mayor are also pushing very hard and we have seen that in different session here.
I want to start maybe with a very personal story, if I can start.
Before joining Stier, I was advisor of the mayor of Paris, the former mayor of Maris, and Hidalgo, that she has been in power for 12 years.
And I don't know if you heard, but she has really pushed a very strong transformation within the city of Paris.
Through C 40, she visited Copenhagen in Europe as well in Denmark, and she came back and said, I want cycling.
I want this in Paris.
And she's she's from Catalonia.
She's a very strong woman.
And so she say, I have ten years, I want to transform Paris.
And she has really did a form of revolution in the city of Paris, transforming the freeway that were in the middle of the city to do a form of place where people are walking, cycling, transforming also all of the street in front of the school.
200 streets in front of school have became a place for people to learn how to bike, to learn how to scoot to no more cars, only grinning and playful space.
She has transformed all of the main, all of the main square of Paris las de la Basil Place denao to a similar approach and everything.
It has been a huge revolution in the city and I want to say in the first mandate, Paris was a big construction work and it was also complicated for the inhabitants.
She removed 50% of the parking plot to develop terras sport activities and everything.
She wanted to be re elected because she wanted to continue.
But it was hard to explain.
And I think the narrative she was building to explain this transformation she wanted to do was climate climate climate, which in some way to explain that to connect to the reality of the citizen or their daily life, it's not the most powerful way.
So around her with the team, we were really thinking we need to showcase better the multi benefit of this transformation.
How much we reduce air pollution in the city, how much we help more children to be free to move freely in the cities, how much we also help people to adopt a more active lifestyle in a city where obesity, for example, and diabetes were growing.
Showing that basically doing this is not just for climate goals, and goal.
It's also very connected to the quality of life of the citizen and that's where she adopts the model of the 15 minute cities that she stole actually from Melbourne, from Portland that were already pushing this agenda before Paris, and then COVID hit and it becomes the global push around this vision of creating cities that are polycentric, which means several, a lot of different neighborhood where you can walk, where you can find the amenities and everything.
I think showing the health benefits of this action, which was real and very important was very powerful and spoke much more to the pasion than actually the narrative of the climate.
Obviously, at C 40, we want to continue the climate agenda, but we also want to showcase how this climate agenda is also better for the quality of life, for the inclusion of the people.
Now I'm coming back to my role at C 40, which is really about helping, as you are mein, 100 global major cities in the world to accelerate good urban planning.
I'm a director of urban planning, so we work on their master plan on their strategic planning.
But we also think that there is a need to combine master plan with this form of bottom up approach of transformation, working at the neighborhood scale with the population to transform their own neighborhood for better health, better access to services, better also housing improvement.
I think the example of Bogota is obviously I mentioned Paris, but I think Bogota has also learned a lot to show and everything, especially through the force of Vanessa.
We have been developing a program called Green and Thriving Neighborhood, where we bring together 50 cities that are working together, doing monthly webinar, joining in a in person workshop to explain how they are working, how they are challenging, what are the success on transforming neighborhood.
We have one, for example, in a cupboard of Mont where all of our Latin American city will work around this approach in San Paolo likely.
Then we wanted also to support specific neighborhood transformation.
We have several projects, one in Bogota, in Aman, in Jordan, in Dhakar, in Senegal, in Milan, in Italy, so in different contexts where we are helping this type of transformation and also helping scaling because Vanessa always say that doing one pilot is great.
Being able to explain the success and being able to scale, which means also financing to scale this type of neighborhood transformation, neighborhood revolution, if I can say, across the city was very important.
To do that, we have been partnering with IDB, the Development Bank of Latin America.
We have been partnering also with Novo Nordisk, which is a pharmaceutical company, we also help to fight obesity and diabetes.
And we develop a platform a little bit similar to yours actually called HealCy Neighborhood Explorer that first, we're using 26 different approach to measure.
In all of the cities, it's open.
You can.
You can check how much your city and each of your neighborhood are 15 minute city align.
So you can check how they are doing, and then you can identify a few specific transformation of the neighborhood and calculate how much this project will both reduce JAG emission concretely, reduce life expectancy, improve life expectancy, reduce, and also reduce the risk on diabetes and chronical disease and everything.
The idea again, is to help the city to take the good decision, understand what will make a difference shading actually.
We know that shading, obviously it's a matter of quality of life, but it's also very strong in terms of conical disease.
It's a very strong impact on conical disease, respiratory and everything.
It's also looking at all of these things to explain to the citizen.
If you do that, you can extend the life expectancy in your neighborhood that one or two years and everything.
So giving also strong arguments to the city leaders so they can explain to their population why this transformation is good for the planet and for the people as you say always.
I think it's important to say all of these need to be inclusion, inclusion, inclusion.
So that means starting where the neighborhood needs the most.
And also, it's also very important.
All of the project we were mentioning is also a lot about public space.
And I believe public space is a The living room of every neighborhood is a garden of people and children who doesn't have garden.
It's a place where they can meet and everything.
Creating an environment, there was a study recently showing how much children in our cities have lost autonomy to move, to play, and they were measuring the distance for our children without holding the end of an adult.
It's terrible.
Today in our cities, they can't move anymore freely.
Creating a space where they can walk again alone to school, where they can move, play in the city, it's also a very important way.
If I finish just to come back to my initial point, personal, which is Paris, it was really very important for Paris to do that.
Because Paris was losing inhabitants.
We need to say it after COVID, a lot of people were saying, Okay, it's not a nice place, you know, to raise.
I don't want to be stuck in my neighborhood without access to greening, without access to place for my children to play.
And it was also a very powerful way to say, you know, we will create a place where you can raise your family, and it will also come obviously with the cost of housing and everything.
Very well.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Helen.
Bring the power of the network, looking at the climate health bridge and showing the transformative power of the city using its systems of urban planning and design.
Thank you so much, Helen.
And I think this now drives us to the question of how we look at this topical area more than just a privilege, but a right, which really brings the normative angle to this.
And we now want to introduce our sister agency, the WHO that has really the leadership of driving these nomative frameworks.
WHO's Urban Health work and Healthy Cities program has been running now for decades, and what we are seeing now is a genuine inflection point.
The WHO UN Habitat Partnership is being renewed now and strengthened.
This matters because all these elements that all these initiatives you're hearing need to go to scale.
What we've heard from Bogota party, from the healthy cities, from the young people, all this needs to go to scale, and it's a question of being a city challenge.
It requires the normative weight of WHO and the urban expertise of your habitat working together, connecting cities to finance, to standards, to each other.
So Natalie, you are at the center of all this partnership.
What does WHO bring to the scaling challenge, and what does this renewed alliance make possible of what wasn't possible before? Thank you very much, and it's a pleasure to be here, and it's a pleasure to hear to all the success stories that are actually happening across the world.
So maybe just to set the scene, is just to remind ourselves that WHO has been working on urban health or healthy cities for decades.
However, this being said, this has been done quite in a siloed way.
What I want to say is that It has been done through an environmental health lens or health promotion lens, or maybe an emergency preparedness lens.
But actually, there was little, if I would like to say, integration of all those technical areas.
There's also not necessarily a common strategic approach to that.
And a couple of years back, I would say five to six years back, there has been really an increased recognition that if we want to achieve global health, this needs to go through urban health.
If we want to make sure that populations across all our countries are benefiting not only the right services, but that they're protecting actually from the health risks, we need to empower local governments to take action.
Having this in mind, this has led to a very strong and better understanding that WHO needs to scale out urban health.
And so for today's discussions, I just would like to highlight some of the few entry points that we have been taking over the last couple of years.
The very first is that we have been trying, as I was saying, to really make them the argument that if you want to achieve urban health, this needs to be done in a very strategic approach.
It's not about seeing climate change or migration or food insecurity or all these topics as separate agendas.
They need to be together, and where this happens is really at the very local level.
On the other way, we don't have necessarily to address them all at the same time in the same way because they are also local priorities.
But one can be used actually to influence the other.
This co benefit approach that you were mentioning is absolutely essential.
Having this in mind, WHO has been trying to provide guidance on how to take this strategic approach, showing that partnership, that innovation, that governance financing are one of the key mechanisms.
This is, I would like one of the key high level approaches.
The second one is to mention the WHO, as you may know, is a normative organization.
What does it mean? We provide normative guidelines.
But again, traditionally, this has been done for the clinical sector.
It's clinical guidelines about vaccines or other areas.
In 2018, WHO launched its very first guideline on housing and health.
Why is it so important? Because it was the first a normative guideline that was actually addressing a sector that was impacting health.
This is from 2018, so it's just a couple of years ago and there is actually room for expanding it, updating it.
But this was fundamental and I think it's important that we as an organization continue to work on normative guidelines that addresses sectors outside health.
Then the third point is really to then strengthen our networks and work with networks.
WHO is leading, co leading, partnering with a number of city networks that has health at the center.
We have regional healthy city networks, we have age friendly cities and communities, partnership for healthy cities, and these are key vehicles that have been understood to be absolutely essential for driving the health agenda at the very local level.
And actually, they need to be used and build on to actually translate the normative guidelines into practical action.
And so it's not only about our guidelines, it's also about the networks that we have been hearing, C 40 and others that are actually instrumental to translating that recommendations into practical tools.
Last but not least, I would like to say capacity building.
Capacity building and actually WHO is now starting to develop a training course on urban health that is going to be hosted by the WO Academy.
Why do I feel that this is a scoop? It's because traditionally WHO has been developing training that are focusing on the clinical again sector, the health sector.
Now, these trainings that are part of the WHO Academy, first of all, they're going to be addressing not only the health going to be addressing the non health sector as a key actually implementer of health interventions.
And secondly, it's going to be really at the very local level.
So there's a really shift in the way that we approach training.
Now, as regards to the renewed partnership, we can't do that in silo, right? We need to do it with our partners, and UN Habitat is a very, very strong partner, and the renewed collaboration that we have is really making things move and change.
I think the first one is that we have a new collaborative agreement where we identify new joint priorities, and this is important because we need to prioritize.
We need to make sure of where collectively we can make the difference.
Emergency preparedness, housing, just to mention a few of them.
The second one is again to go on the capacity building.
We need to do it together because we are addressing different stakeholders, but we need to bring them around the table.
So we have our interlocutors that we need to bring from the different perspective.
The third one is Even if we scale up globally, this cannot be done without our regional colleagues and levels.
I think if we want to be successful, we need to go through our even regional and country offices and we have seen in the collaboration that we have been bringing together our respective regional colleagues in a much stronger way.
I would like to conclude that all this partnership is really happening at a very local level.
It's so fantastic to have Lipska here from us from atne because actually, this is an example where collectively, the two organizations have been working in implementing joint programs with health and well being as an outcome.
So I think I would like, you know, to end with this, but we can do better, right? We can always do more.
And I would like to see that today still, we don't see health in urban or cities in our respective, I would like to say, committed documents.
So we still have work to be done with our member states.
When we talk about the new urban agenda or the declaration, right, for um reinvigorating the new agenda.
Health is still missing.
In our WHO resolutions, I would like to say as an example.
The role of local governments, the role of cities, the importance of urban as an area is also missing.
We're doing a lot of work but still to be done.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Natalie, for bringing that normative strength that the UN offers and linking it to the operations that cities are actually speaking to.
Now, in the remaining 5 minutes or so, I will ask questions.
I have given the mic to some of you, please mention your name, organization, your question.
Then I'll ask for the round of questions.
Then finally, I'll come to you all to take notes and respond to those questions, beginning from extreme right.
Hi.
Hello.
I Hi, my name is Ia and I'm actually a participant here with my sister.
I'd like to ask a question about having to transform these cities to make them more friendly and healthier.
What is typically the biggest rollback you are facing? Is it the political will? Is it the political will funding or changing people's habits and mindsets? Thank you very much to the panel.
My name is Handa Harmanji.
I am the WHO World Health Organization representative in Baku.
So we have wonderful attendance from young people from the nationals, but I'm also sure that many more are watching online.
My question is to give them something.
Can each one of you please give us one evidence based citywide intervention that these young people could strive to advocate for in their cities.
When I heard from the UN habitat representative who moved here recently, that if you place bus stops like four or 500 meters apart from each other, it actually decreases their obesity rate, which impacts on heart attacks and things like that.
So it actually decreases the mortality, the deaths due to non communicable diseases.
It struck me very much.
So it's an intervention at the city level that has nothing to do with the health sector, which has direct effects on health.
That's the kind of sort of evidence or anecdotal evidence, if you like, I would like to hear from each one of you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alvin.
I'm students of Ganda State University and I Christians.
What contributions can you make regarding the provisions of mobility in public transport and most important? The comfortable movements of disabled citizens.
How can we make instance calculations.
Thank you so much.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Marga.
I'm from Azerbijan.
At I I I'm sorry, as a citizen of Azerbijan, I am deeply proud that our country is hosting such predictions international event.
And as an artist, I am truly honored to be a part of it.
I hope this event will inspire us as artists living a positive impact on new urban planning, teaching and architecture.
While greatly contributing to our personal grave, I welcome to P Pain and Accident.
My thanks to organization for putting together such magnificent Evan.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
The final question.
Fine.
Thank you very much.
I'm Katherine Kline from New York City.
We were the first city in the world to be accredited officially with the World Health Organization Age Friendly Cities, and I am co chair of a global civil society group representing and advocating on behalf of all of you who are old now and will become older.
So I'd love to know from you, Natalie, how do you integrate age friendly cities? You mentioned it, but my guess is how many of you have ever heard of the World Health Organization Age Friendly Cities? Great, too.
If you could elaborate just a little bit because I think that pulls together a lot of what each of you so effectively mentioned.
Thank you very much.
I'll turn to the panelists beginning with Vanessa, just short responses based on the questions that you've had.
Well, I think that was very interesting questions and the way that I'm going to approach is just 11 case.
And from the case, I'm going to come back and just to mention some things.
So I think that if we can understand and identify that urban and neighborhood transformations could be affected for good opportunities to the citizens in the case of Bogotans, that's the way that we approach.
For instance, when we do a neighborhood transformation that is those days I show you 27 care blocks that are basically one per neighborhood.
Then we are doing in Bogota, 80 neighborhood improvements that are including part of that care blocks.
So basically, when we do those neighborhood improvements, youth population could fight public space recovery.
They could identify the possibility of having subsidies for housing programs in the surrounding areas of those facilities.
But also, I think that linking those neighborhood improvements with the accessibility of the new transport systems of the Metro, BRT, the cable trams, given that they gave them the chance to have a unique opportunity for be connected to the city and the downtown area.
My point is that Neighborhood improvements could move on to urban transformation, a sense of identity of the population, and put care as part of the conversation of the whole strategy of the city.
Celia.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, I would also try to respond to all the questions with just one idea that I think when we talk about this concept of health in all policies, what it means is that, and I think we all agree with all the experiences that we have shared before that health has to be addressed in a holistic way.
We cannot keep working in silos in urban planning or health or services or green spaces, right? We have to combine and try to coordinate and collaborate in an interdisciplinary way so that we can provide well being for residents in every aspect, right? Because it has to do with services, with care, with social interaction.
So I think for me, for us, this is the main idea to try to bring health in a more comprehensive way so that we don't leave nobody behind.
And yeah, I think that's it.
So thank you very much.
Celia, Helen.
Yeah.
Maybe you're trying to respond very quickly on two elements.
The first one was on a database like evidence and everything.
I really encourage you to have a look to the platform I was mentioning Neighborhood explorer, healthy neighborhood explorer, because it's exactly the type of data that is giving.
And we really try to have that data very concrete.
Life expects like how much you win of life I don't know why I can't say it like expectancy and also how much percentage it will reduce of diabetes and obesity and GAG emission because we don't want to it's really you do that, you mention the bus stop, but you create a bike lane here, how much you can get and we really try to be very concrete so it can be communicate to the population and discuss with the population and everything.
So really encourage you.
Another thing you mentioned, the use involvement, We have a program called Youth remoting cities that is very connected to this green and thriving neighborhood where it's really about involving youth in the development in the design of the neighborhood transformation.
With the city, we identify a specific neighborhood and we invite both university students and school to come with some idea, and then we help them to work with the city to implement and to develop some of this project.
It has been such an amazing program.
We have like 4,500 students that participate school, youth and 1,500 university and schools that participate.
And it's really good to have in this bottom approach school and youth to also be part with a solution, not just activists, but showing that they have also solution to put on the table with the city leader.
Thank you, Helen Tipsika.
Yes, we know what we need.
So we can we know what do we need done just a young people.
What we need just not an intubation.
We need local government to listen us and also invite to the discussion.
Do not leave youth people.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Natalie, finally.
Thank you very much.
Three points.
The first is if there is an area that you could be advocating for in particular, I think it's about the access to clean energy.
The reason why I'm mentioning this is that there is not only an obvious link between clean energy and health, but there is a link between clean energy and education and development.
In many countries, it's the young girls who go and fetch the wood to actually light and warm the house.
This is time that they don't have actually to go learn.
The second point is about the cultural intervention and artistic intervention comment, pardon me.
When we talk about urban health, yes, we talk about build environment, but we talk also about interventions in the urban city context that are good for health like cultural intervention.
For example, I Making social prescriptions for elderes to go to the theater to do artistic activities is a social prescription and is a culture interventions for health in the city.
Last but not least on age friendly cities and communities, there's going to be a global meeting of the H friendly cities and communities in June and San Sebastian this year.
But I think what is important is that we are more and more trying to link the age friendly cities and communities also to the city networks within WHO to make sure that these are not seen as independent activities, but they are actually together from a life course approach actually addressing health.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, panelists.
Thank you very much, audience.
I think let me close with three things I'm taking from this session.
One, of course, is that care and health are not afterthoughts.
We are very clearly seeing that they are structured issues.
They are part of the structure of the city itself.
Bota, we've heard about it parties, we've heard about it.
This is the evidence that we can see that cities in this room can prove it in their own way.
Two, from Dipsica we've heard us about the data and youth.
Most these are most powerful allies.
The Urban Health San, which has also been mentioned by the Healthy Cities and the Young Game Changers Initiative are not just tools.
They are ways of saying, We will listen before we plan.
And then finally, you do not have to do this alone.
We've heard from the networks, WOC 40 and UNhabitat They exist precisely to help cities not reinvent the wheel, so uses.
I want to finally thank my colleague Crystal Lahoud and the team for pulling this together.
Our team will be at the arena stand for the next 20 minutes.
Please feel free to engage and interact as we close.
Thank you so much.