Have you or your organization been successful in making changes to the “built environment” that promise to improve health or health equity in your community? For example, do you have:
- Developed safe cycling infrastructure?
- Improved tree and vegetation cover in low income neighborhoods?
- Developed a policy that guarantees equitable access to parks and recreation areas?
- Adopted a policy that separates daycares from high traffic corridors?
The HealthyDesign.City project, established by the Canadian Consortium for Research on Urban Environmental Health (CANUE), in partnership with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC ), is developing digital tools that will make it possible to map environmental exposures and the characteristics of the built environment that have an impact on health, such as heat, air pollution and noise, access to parks, recreation and local amenities in every Canadian city.
To accompany these tools, we would like to present examples of projects, urban interventions and policies that have been developed in Canadian communities to create healthy communities that promote health or health equity.
We seek testimonials from public health professionals, town planners and community groups who have been successful in making their communities healthier or more equitable by improving the built environment.
We are interested in a wide range of projects. We would like to hear about neighborhood projects and localized urban interventions as well as municipal policies that can impact an entire community. We are particularly interested in those that aim to address environmental inequalities to improve the health of vulnerable or disadvantaged populations.
We would like to know about the changes to the built environment that affect
- the pedestrian (walkability) or cyclist accessibility of the neighborhoods;
- access to public transport;
- greening communities, and access to parks, green spaces and community facilities;
- exposure to air pollution or noise; and
- resilience in the face of heat islands
If you have a success story to share with us, please send us a message at kim.perrotta@healthydesign.city . We will select various interventions, contact the relevant people for an interview and prepare articles that will be published on the HealthyDesign.City website.