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This course will take you on a deep dive into the key steps for transforming cities into mobility driven liveable communities that we can measure, assess, identify and evaluate.

Creating healthy, liveable and sustainable cities is a major challenge in the face of population growth, social inequalities, traffic congestion, increases in non-communicable diseases and climate change. Accommodating all these issues presents infrastructure challenges, but also opportunities to create liveable places where people can be active and healthy.

Human mobility within cities is recognised as a key area of policy intervention to achieve these goals. The development of healthy cities requires active engagement of private, public and societal actors. City officials and urban mobility professionals play a critical role in ensuring that policies and interventions are equitable and promote citizen health and wellbeing.

Welcome to this course about transitioning to healthy cities through mobility-related interventions.

Learning outcomes

The big question we’ll be exploring in this course is: ‘How can we transition to healthy cities through mobility-related interventions in the built environment?’ You will learn how to:

• Assess new liveability frameworks linked to the social determinants of health, involving explicit consideration of health, equity, sustainability and quality of life.
• Apply these frameworks through indicators to support evidence-based decision-making in policy and programs.
• Calculate interventions and economic benefits associated with mobility and health.
• Create considerations to multiple benefits of safety, social connection and belonging, cultural expression and environmental health.
• Explain qualitative indicators to measure grounded and diverse perspectives associated with a locality.
• Explore on-ground implementation through specific examples and encouraging collaboration and community engagement in co-design.

Your educators

Andrew Butt, Associate Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies and the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University.

Melanie Davern, Associate Professor within the Health, Place & Society group in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University.

Our educators are from RMIT University. As well as being based in Melbourne, Australia, RMIT has international campuses in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Barcelona. RMIT specialises in cities, including various aspects of urban design and planning.

Your task: icebreaker

Please introduce yourself by telling us a bit about yourself in the Padlet below. Please:

1. Open Padlet
2. On the map in Padlet locate the city where you live or your nearest city by placing a pin. Please only share the metro city, and not a street location or similar.
3. Add a photo of the city where you live or your nearest city. Extra credit for adding a photo of yourself in your city location!
4. Tell us your name and something about yourself such as a hobby
5. Comment on and like some of the other posts.

See this guide for more information and help with using Padlet if needed.