Building a Healthy Urban Design Index (HUDI): how to promote health and sustainability in European cities

Background

As global urbanisation accelerates, alongside declining environmental quality and increasing climate challenges, it is increasingly vital for urban planners and policy makers to integrate health and wellbeing considerations into urban planning. This study introduces the Healthy Urban Design Index (HUDI), a high-resolution spatial index developed for European cities. HUDI combines policy-relevant indicators related to urban design, sustainable transportation, environmental quality, and greenspace accessibility—key factors influencing human health and well-being. Unlike existing indices, which often focus on few or large metropolitan cities and lack spatial granularity, HUDI offers high resolution and extends its scope to small-sized and medium-sized cities, home to over 50% of Europe's population.

Methods

We analysed 917 European cities in total, 916 cities and one larger city, on the basis of the 2018 Urban Audit database. Using open-source spatial data, we mapped cities at a fine 250 m grid cell scale. To compare cities effectively, we grouped them into five city clusters on the basis of population size, following the definition of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development: large metropolitan (11), metropolitan (53), medium-sized (177) and small (638) cities, and small towns (38). A set of 13 indicators, across four overarching domains of urban design, sustainable transportation, environmental quality, and green space accessibility was calculated spatially at the 250 m grid cell scale and then aggregated to the city level. The 13 indicators were optimal dwelling density, compactness, mid-rise development, permeability, opportunity to walk, opportunity to cycle, public transport stops, air quality (PM_2·5 and NO₂), surrounding greenness (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), lower urban heat islands, universal access to green spaces, and access to large green spaces. To ensure comparability, all indicators were standardised on a scale from 0 to 10, considering data quality, indicator target levels, and specific evaluation criteria. The HUDI was then calculated by applying different weights to these indicators, allowing us to rank cities within their respective city size cluster. We visualised overall city performance using spider plots and did Local Moran's I and Local Indicators of Spatial Association analyses to pinpoint areas with poor urban planning. We did sensitivity tests and correlation analyses, incorporating external datasets where available, to validate our findings.

Findings

HUDI scores ranged from 2·9 to nearly 7 of 10, showing that there is still room for improvement in creating healthier urban environments across European cities. Larger metropolitan cities, particularly in northern Europe and parts of Spain, tended to score well in the urban design and sustainable transportation domains. In contrast, medium and smaller-sized cities did better in the environmental quality domain. However, smaller cities often struggled with the green space accessibility domain, as fewer parks and green spaces were accessible via walking or cycling, despite having plenty of surrounding greenery. A clear east–west divide exists, with cities in Western Europe, such as those in the UK, Spain, and Sweden, achieving the highest HUDI scores, whereas eastern European cities, particularly in Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland, scored lower. These findings highlight how city size and regional factors shape urban sustainability and public health outcomes.

Interpretation

The HUDI is a large-scale, high-resolution, open-data tool that measures key urban health factors across nearly 1000 European cities of different sizes. As an open-source resource, HUDI provides valuable, data-driven insights to help cities identify strengths, weaknesses, and urban management areas needing improvement. By offering clear, measurable indicators, it helps policy makers and urban planners pinpoint problem areas and make informed decisions to improve public health and sustainability. HUDI is a dynamic tool, not a definitive ranking. By clustering cities by size, it enables comparisons, knowledge, and best practice sharing. Further research is needed to refine HUDI and expand its indicators and cities as better data become available. A key strength of HUDI is its ability to highlight data gaps and encourage better data collection. We call on researchers and urban planners to support HUDI development by sharing data and code on GitHub and Zenodo, helping track urban health and sustainability progress more effectively.

Funding

The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Generalitat de Catalunya, Centro de Investigación Biomédica en red Epidemiología y Salud Pública, Urban Burden of Disease Estimation for Policy Making Horizon Europe project, Barcelona Institute for Global Health, University of Turin, ISI Foundation, and US Department of Energy.