From Urban Projects to Healthy City Policies

de Leeuw, Evelyne

A definition of projectitis (also known as ‘projectism’) is proposed to describe a key barrier to full deployment of a Healthy City vision and values. This chapter argues that to put health high on local social and political agendas necessarily means to transcend project-based work, and move into lasting programme and policy development. The conditions for such approaches are favourable in Healthy Cities, as a number of glocal (global and local) developments invest and sustain longer term perspectives. These conditions include emphases on policy diffusion, social justice, a better understanding of complex systems, and global commitments to the development and implementation of Health in All Policies. These efforts, in turn, are grounded in renewed and tangible support from Universal Health Coverage and Primary Health Care, asset-based community health development, and better insights into what drives (health) equity and economic development. In describing these elements of policy development for value-based Healthy Cities the chapter also gives a firm argument for a broad range of stakeholders to engage successfully in longer term policy change.