Defining Urban Health for Strategic Action

<ns3:p>Cities play a dominant and expanding role in human lives and civilization. As such, urban health is an increasingly important facet of public, global, and planetary health, and its profound links to other areas of sustainable development make it an important nexus issue. However, there is considerable variation in how urban health is conceived and understood, including different ideas about its scope and boundaries, proper remit, subjects, protagonists, locus and sources of authority, and relationships to other rubrics. These differences derive from the complexity of urban environments and the emergence and evolution of the field of urban health from actions and perspectives spanning multiple sectors, scales, and domains. Recognizing the value of diverse viewpoints and usages, we explore and clarify several conceptual issues and debates and propose a definition of urban health as a shared basis for strategic action.</ns3:p>