Health and wellbeing (SDG3) in urban design and spatial planning – a retrospective roadmap towards the collective impact model

ABSTRACT

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lay the foundations for supporting global health yet the rate of meeting the SDGs is slow and complex. In order to meet these transactional and multidisciplinary challenges a paradigm shift from operating in silos is needed, to include a more interdisciplinary approach (top down as well as bottom up approaches). This paper reports top down and bottom up approaches that were used to address health and wellbeing in a middle-eastern multi-cultural city. In this retrospective roadmap, we highlight the key pillars that appear to have assisted in progress in achieving SDG3, Good Health and Well-being. The roadmap includes the development of the key pillars: 1) a common agenda, 2) shared measurement system, 3) mutually reinforcing activities, 4) continuous communication and 5) backbone support. Highlighting condition 4, continuous communication, of the model, we discuss the creation, use and importance of a “communication tool” used for Healthy Urban Planning. This tool developed cooperatively with relevant municipality departments, national government, and multidisciplinary community shareholders, led to organizational changes and the creation of the Sustainability Department of the municipality. This retrospective roadmap appears to reflect the collective impact framework appropriate for solving complex challenges such as achieving SDGs.

KEYWORDS:

• Health & wellbeing
• sustainable development goals
• collective impact
• communication tool
• healthy urban planning
• health equity

This article is related to:

Research for city practice

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ronit Davidovich Marton (architect) for her contribution to the above described process. Photo credits Copyrights: Gal Meiri, (Yoav) Ari Dudkevich, Transport Management Team, Citypass, Israel Railways and Dan Porges.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Miri Jano Reiss

In the case of healthy urban planning in the context of implementing SDG3 in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem Municipality became the backbone organization. As the Healthy City coordinator in the Department of Sustainable Development, of the Jerusalem Municipality, Miri Jano-Reiss leads and implements the guidelines of the Israeli-European Healthy Cities Program. She holds a Master’s degree in Urban Planning and Preservation from Bar Ilan University and is a PhD candidate on Healthy Urban Planning at Bar Ilan University. Her research interests include questions of walkability and hilly topography. She has managed city wide projects and worked closely with community groups. Working together with her at the Jerusalem Municipality are Amiram Rotem, Head of the Department of Sustainable Development, Ofer Gridinger, Director of the Planning Department, and Yael Tzur, environmental planner, the Department of Sustainable Development. They are all happy to share what they learned from many years of cooperative work.