Have you or your organization had some success making changes to the “built environment” that promise to improve health or health equity in your community?  For example, have you:

• Expanded safe cycling infrastructure in your community?
• Improved tree coverage in low-income neighbourhoods?
• Developed a policy that ensures equitable access to parks?
• Adopted a policy that separates daycare centres from high volume traffic corridors?

The HealthyDesign.City project, established by the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE), in partnership with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), is developing digital tools that will map environmental exposures and built environment characteristics that impact health, such as heat, air and noise pollution, access to parks and recreation, and local amenities, in every Canadian city.

To complement these tools, we would like to highlight stories about the projects, urban interventions and policies that have been developed in Canadian communities to create healthy communities that foster health or health equity. 

We would like to hear from public health professionals, planners and community groups that have had some success making their communities healthier or more equitable by improving the “built environment”.

We are interested in a broad range of projects. We would like to hear about very localized neighbourhood projects and urban interventions as well as municipal policies that can impact an entire community.  We are particularly interested in those that aim to address environmental inequities to improve the health of vulnerable or disadvantaged populations. 

We would like to hear about changes to the built environment that relate to:

• the walkability and bike-ability of neighbourhoods;
• service by, and access to, public transit;
• the greenness of a community, and access to parks, greenspace and community facilities;
• exposure to air pollution or noise pollution; and
• resiliency against urban heat islands.

If you have a success story to share, please send a note to us at kim.perrotta@healthydesign.city.  We will select a variety of interventions, contact those involved to conduct an interview, and prepare stories that feature their projects on the Healthy Design City website.