Preface

Cities are now humans' dominant habitat and urbanization is currently one of the most profound global development forces. As urbanization trends are projected to continue, reaching the global Sustainable Development Goals（SDGs)requires cities to be sustainable by ensuring that they are healthy places to live in and providing opportunities to improve the wellbeing of its inhabitants. Human health and wellbeing in cities is closely linked to the structures and functions of cities. They provide a wide range of benefits and are supported by the global ecosystem. Despite being complex systems which provide goods and services, cities also have ecological footprints many times larger than the area they physically occupy. Therefore, for cities to become sustainable it requires not only to strive for better human lives but to see the city system embedded in the global ecosystem and to find a path from urban health to planetary health. Urban health and planetary health are inseparably linked. This is strongly emphasized in the many articles of the New Urban Agenda agreed on in Quito, Ecuador October 17-20,2016, which refer to urban-rural linkages.

The definition and concept of health applied in this book can be seen as a natural integrator cutting across various urban sectors and relevant, as progress indicator, for many urban policies. Applying health as a natural integrator should be seen as an attempt to change from a siloed urban planning and management approach to an integrated one. In that context, the WHO（World Health Organization)paper entitled“Health as the Pulse of the New Urban agenda”includes contributions from members of this Urban Health and Wellbeing: a Systems Approach programme. It clarifies the linkages between health and urban development and provides a vision for integrating health into urban planning and governance. The New Urban Agenda recognizes that urban development and governance can mitigate the risks and promote the health and wellbeing of urban populations. Implementing it requires agreement on definitions, concepts, con texts, frameworks and possible pathways of change towards urban health and wellbeing. This volume provides that foundation for implementation.

The systems approach we develop in this volume goes beyond the mere recognition that cities function as complex systems and are themselves part of the planetary ecosystems. It is rooted in complex system science, recognizes the knowable and unknowable, plannable and unplannable aspects of cities, suggests scientific and societal responses to both and the type of decision making required to improve the health and wellbeing of people in urban environments. That systems approach embraces ecological, economic and social determinants of health and offers a transdisciplinary approach for translating science into action. Without a systems approach to urban health and wellbeing, the sustainable urban development goals of the New Urban Agenda are unlikely to be achieved.

This book, builds on the science plan（ICSU 2011) which led to the establishment of the programme and conceptualises core elements for its implementation. It provides an overview of historical and current urban developments and related health challenges and proposes a theoretical and conceptual model for understanding how human health and wellbeing can be achieved in cities. Eventually it proposed guiding principles and thematic areas for a range of implementation activities. Implementing activities which enhance health and wellbeing in the changing urban environment by taking a systems approach requires clarity on what a system approach encompasses. This volume attempts to do so by defining a systems approach for urban health and wellbeing and by developing an innovative conceptual model which explains how cities function as complex urban systems for the health and wellbeing of its residents.

The vision of the programme, are cities functioning as integrated complex systems which sustainably provide benefits for the health and wellbeing of its residents. The Urban Health and Wellbeing: a Systems Approach programme aims at promoting and coordinating research projects which take a systems approach to urban health and wellbeing, developing methodologies and identifying data needs, building and strengthening capacity for applying systems methods and thinking and communicating new knowledge on systems approaches to urban constituency groups. To become effective, new collaborative networks need to be established, which collaborate with ICSU member organizations and research programmes, with universities, community initiatives, scientific projects, and educational as well as cultural projects. The programme aims at facilitating the creation of networks and forums to promote the exchange of different types of knowledge in order to advance the evidence base for policy and decision making showing the added value of a systems approach for urban health and wellbeing.