Healthy Parks, Healthy Cities
A healthy city sustains healthy people. For the first time in history, more of the planets' population now live in urban areas. There are growing public health concerns including rising global rates of chronic diseases such as obesity, hypertension, depression, and anxiety.
Parks are emerging as important public health resources that can enhance people's mental, physical, and social wellbeing by connecting people to nature, offering respite, providing access to physical activity opportunities, and serving as safe vibrant spaces for fostering social connections. Diverse urban spaces including parks, gardens, urban forests, community gardens, and park-lets can all support people's health and wellbeing. So, the need to ensure that cities are vibrant, sustainable, accessible, well-planned, and designed is critical.