Today, more than half of the population in the world lives in urban areas. By 2050, the UN predicts that this number will increase to about two-thirds of the world’s population. As a result, the cities of tomorrow will be dense and above all, congested. In other words, sustainable development cannot be achieved if we do not change the way we organize and build our cities.
With support from Nordic Innovation, the Nordic Smart City Network (NSCN) will initiate the Nordic Healthy Cities project, which is setting out to mitigate and prevent health challenges and set the public sector as a driver of innovation in close partnership with private companies. Efficient urban planning and management practices must be in place to deal with the health and wellbeing challenges brought by urbanization. Data-driven development of the urban environment serves to improve health and the quality of life, as well as functional city developments such as climate protection initiatives.
Five projects to test innovative practices
The NSCN comprises 20 cities from all five Nordic countries that will soon decide on five collaboration projects. The cities are now developing and sharing project ideas that will lead to a final decision before summer 2020. The five projects will test innovative practices to tackle health effects in future urban areas. It is of great importance to both NSCN and Nordic Innovation that the projects are innovative and prioritize the transfer of learning to other Nordic cities and potentially other and bigger markets.
The ultimate aim is to create supportive urban environments and living, to improve health and quality of life, and thus support Nordic Innovation’s vision of a sustainable and integrated health region. NSCN will cooperate with private companies to deliver sustainable solutions to deal with the health challenges brought by increased urbanization.
Nordic cities stronger together
By sharing knowledge and learnings from innovation projects and by collaborating with private businesses, the Nordic cities will scale successful projects within their city to other partner cities. Individually, each of the Nordic cities might be a small player in the global arena, but together in the network they gain a critical mass, a safe environment to experiment and try new solutions, and a place to share learnings that can benefit the whole region.
The Nordic Healthy Cities project is funded by Nordic Innovation as part of our Health, Demography and Quality of Life program.
Text by Maj Jønsson/City of Copenhagen/Nordic Smart City Network and adapted by Nordic Innovation.
