ABSTRACT
Urbanisation has always perhaps occurred as a result of the human desire to improve life opportunities, primarily through wealth accumulation. But evaluating those improvements in financial terms alone has led to imbalanced allocations of space, access, and activities in cities. The COVID-19 epidemic has brought into close focus the need for a change in priorities and alternative modes of behaviour and urban living that are necessary to create cleaner, safer, and healthier places for all; places that make people’s lives better and happier. Finding new ways of evaluating human progress and measuring how well our cities then meet people’s true needs becomes an essential step towards their improvement in both acting as a first step in preventative care provision and in efficiently allocating limited funding under the weight of burgeoning urban population growth.
