Strategies on healthy urban planning and construction for challenges of rapid urbanization in China
Authors: Liu Chengcheng 
Published: August 2021

In the past 40 years, China has experienced the largest and fastest urbanization development in the world. The infrastructure, urban environment and medical services of cities have been improved significantly. The health impacts are manifested in the decrease of the incidence of infectious diseases and the significant increase of the life span of residents. However, the development of urbanization in China has also created many problems, including the increasing pollution of urban environment such as air, water and soil, the disorderly spread of urban construction land, the fragmentation of natural ecological environment, dense population, traffic congestion and so on. With the process of urbanization and motorization, the lifestyle of urban population has changed, and the disease spectrum and the sequence of death causes have changed. Chronic noncommunicable diseases have replaced acute infectious diseases and become the primary threat to urban public health. According to the data published by the famous medical journal The LANCET on China's health care, the economic losses caused by five major non-communicable diseases (ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, breast cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) will reach US$23 trillion between 2012 and 2030, more than twice the total GDP of China in 2015 (US$11.7 trillion). Therefore, China proposes to implement the strategy of "Healthy China" and develop the policy of "integrating health into ten thousand strategies". Integrate health into the whole process of urban and rural planning, construction and governance to form a healthy, equitable and accessible production and living environment. China is building healthy cities through the above four strategies. The main strategies from national system design to local planning are as follows. First of all, the top-level design of the country. There are two main points: one point, the formulation of the Healthy China 2030 Plan determines the first batch of 38 pilot healthy cities and practices the strategy of healthy city planning; the other point, formulate and implement the national health city policy and issue the National Healthy City. The evaluation index system evaluates the development of local work from five aspects: environment, society, service, crowd and culture, finds out the weak links in the work in time, and constantly improves the quality of healthy city construction. Secondly, the reform of territorial spatial planning. In order to adapt to the rapid development of urbanization, China urban plan promote the reform of spatial planning system, change the layout of spatial planning into the fine management of space, and promote the sustainable development of cities. To delimit the boundary line of urban development and the red line of urban ecological protection and limit the disorderly spread of urban development as the requirements of space control. The bottom line of urban environmental quality and resource utilization are studied as capacity control and environmental access requirements. The grid management of urban built environment and natural environment is carried out, and the hierarchical and classified management unit is determined. Thirdly, the practice of special planning for local health and medical distribution facilities. In order to embody the equity of health services, including health equity, equity of health services utilization and equity of health resources distribution. For the elderly population, vulnerable groups and patients with chronic diseases, the layout of community health care facilities and intelligent medical treatment are combined to facilitate the "last kilometer" service of health care. Finally, urban repair and ecological restoration design are carried out. From the perspective of people-oriented, on the basis of studying the comfortable construction of urban physical environment, human behavior and the characteristics of human needs, to tackle "urban diseases" and make up for "urban shortboard". China is building healthy cities through the above four strategies. Committed to the realization of a constantly developing natural and social environment, and can continue to expand social resources, so that people can enjoy life and give full play to their potential to support each other in the city.