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DENSAFECITY: Densifying the cities without increased environmental health burden - is it attainable?

Densifying a city has positive impact by providing adequate housing, lowering of transportation needs and reducing needs of using arable land for housing. On the other hand, densifying a city have often shown to lead to unwanted health costs by exposing a larger proportion of the population to air pollution and noise, and by reducing urban green areas. In order to create a both dense and healthy city, with low environmental health impact, the scientific community and stakeholders need to work closely together in the planning of high-density areas (housing and infrastructure).

This project will quantify the health effects of status quo and of a set of densification scenarios. Different ways of densifying a city will be explored, to define easily attainable pollution reduction strategies targeting the larger
municipal planning level as well as the more detailed scale (detail plan level). The work will be conducted in close cooperation with stakeholders from involved municipalities and the region. We will also propose new cost-effective
and suitable mitigation techniques for plans and building techniques in a dialogue with the construction industry. We will especially consider the environmental health effects on vulnerable groups such as children, pregnant
women, and population in low-income urban districts. Developing such evidence based pollution reduction strategies is essential to ensure future healthy dense cities that promotes a long-term social sustainability of housing.

Project group

Study period

2018-2020

Funding body

FORMAS (2018-00047)

Documents and links