Urban Environment, Health, and Longevity
The health and well-being of urban residents are profoundly shaped by their surrounding physical and social environments. While short-term exposures such as extreme heat waves or air pollution events can sharply increase mortality and morbidity, the long-term, cumulative effects of urban living are equally critical. Continuous interactions with the built, natural, and social environments across the life course influence outcomes ranging from chronic disease to healthy aging. Our research examines both the immediate and lifelong impacts of urban physical environments on public health, while recognizing that these outcomes are inseparable from the broader challenges of planetary health, such as climate change, ecosystem degradation, and the sustainability of the urban systems.
Longevity-Ready Cities
As life expectancy rises and urbanization accelerates, age-friendly city initiatives have gained momentum worldwide, which seek to facilitate active and healthy aging by strengthening supports and services for older people. Yet most of these efforts overlook the early-life and mid-life exposures that strongly shape health outcomes later on. Chronic diseases such as cardiovascular illness, cognitive decline, and dementia can often be traced to persistent environmental stressors, including long-term exposure to airborne toxins, extreme heat, and lack of access to green space.
We introduced the concept of longevity-ready cities (Wang et al., 2021), extending the scope of WHO’s age-friendly cities. A longevity-ready city is defined as an inclusive, accessible, and equitable urban environment that supports older populations while simultaneously enabling younger populations to age well. This concept applies a life-course perspective, acknowledging the cumulative effects of physical and social environments, climate change, and disparities on active and healthy aging.
Since its introduction, the longevity-ready concept has resonated with stakeholders in research, design, and policy, such as the UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing, the Stanford Center on Longevity Design Challenge, and the Maryland Department of Aging.
More to Come …
This theme goes beyond longevity-ready cities. We are expanding into new topics on how urban design, climate, and environment shape health across the life course. More will be featured here soon.