CITIES WERE A MISTAKE:

The Mainz study synthesizes the existing evidence on the impact of several urban environmental risks. These include air pollution (more than half of the global deaths from air pollution are due to cardiovascular disease); transportation noise (which contributes to the risk of metabolic disease by raising stress hormone levels, heart rate, and blood pressure); and light pollution at night (associated with changes to the circadian rhythm, which is linked to conditions including obesity and heart disease).

The study then highlights how human health and climate change are linked, and what can be done to help. Urban infrastructure is destroyed and populations harmed by the effects of extreme weather, floods, and heat stress.

Scholars speak about this enmeshing of human health and the well-being of the natural systems on which we depend as planetary health. Increasingly, this is seen as a guiding principle that should drive all urban policies.

Building cities for cars and urban sprawl encourages car use, traffic congestion, air pollution, and noise. The result is more stress, road trauma, and physical inactivity as well as worse health overall and more deaths.

It follows that we need better designs for our cities. Research has shown, for instance, that 20% of all deaths could be prevented if cities were designed to meet the recommendations for physical activity, air pollution, noise, heat, and green space.

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