Review of World Planning Practice (Volume 18): Towards Healthy Cities: Urban Governance, Planning and Design for Human Well-being

Abstract

This Review of World Planning Practice (Volume 18), titled Towards Healthy Cities: Urban Governance, Planning and Design for Human Well-being, adds to the enormous debate on the role of cities and the phenomenon of urbanisation in relation to the pandemic triggered by the coronavirus. Its papers spontaneously prompt the question: Is it this uncontrolled urbanisation that creates conditions for pandemics, and specifically the dramatic experience linked to Covid-19, or is it the experience of the pandemic that will change the way we urbanise, also in the sense of slowing down urbanisation, and the way we will design the contemporary city? The papers selected for this Review open up different perspectives, some utopian, as it should be when one talks about innovating and changing the city, others more founded on paths tested in other urban phenomena, such as urban regeneration, the fight against social exclusion, the quest for sustainability, or the design of public spaces...