HEART project Information

European and international cities face major challenges resulting from global geopolitical, economical, climate, and other changes. This intensifies inequalities in health, due to several factors such as living conditions, health-related behavior, education, occupation, and income. Urban areas are under huge pressure to enhance policies in order to become more sustainable and liveable, as well as to provide environments and social fabric that support Public Health (PH) and Wellbeing (WB). The conventional approach to urban and revitalization planning is based mostly on profit criteria with routine methodologies, often lacking advanced integrated methods and concepts with emphasis on health, societal and environmental aspects (including Climate Change-CC). Moreover, local communities’ needs are neglected and hence cities often end up with solutions that are not embraced by local communities and citizens. To address these challenges, the HEART project aims to comprehensively address factors influencing PH&WB, provide evidence base (proven by clinical tests where appropriates) thus improve urban health and reduce health disparities through changes in individual behavior of citizens, stimulated by different policies. This will include advanced BlueGreen (BG) based urban design, where PH, WB, and environmental quality will be intrinsically built-in in all phases of planning and implementation, with strong involvement of local communities to allow them to embrace new solutions