ABSTRACT

Health is at the core of urban planning and the link between health and built environment was realized in the early 19th century, an era of epidemiology. Over a period, due to industrialization and urbanization, cities’ development became economic centric and the link between health and built environment diminished. The ongoing COVID19 pandemic, an unprecedented health catastrophe has affected 2500 cities globally and emerged as an urban humanitarian emergency. There is a need to re establish the link between health and urban planning as going back to normal is unaffordable.

The aim of the study is to form strategies by integrating Health and Urban planning at local level scale. The tools identified for this study are Sustainable Development Goals, HiAP, Public Health Addendum, Urban HEART, UHI and resilient city tools. These tools are examined to understand how they integrate health and urban planning supported by SWOT analysis, followed by comparative analysis of the tools. Subsequently, sector wise weight assessment is conducted, and the final tool, Integrating Health and Planning tool (IHPAT) devised is a combination of three tools: Public Health Addendum, CityRAP Tool and UHI tool which can encourage assessment of any city for identifying areas of intervention to reduce the impact of COVID19 and prepare cities for future health related disasters.