Housing Session Speakers
| Name | Roderick J. Lawrence |
| Title | Professor, University of Geneva, Switzerland |
| Speech Title | Healthy Cities and Housing: Key Principles for Professional Practices |
| Abstract | Building a healthy city is intentional, not haphazard. It always occurs in a human context which defines and is mutually defined by a wide range of cultural, societal and individual human factors. Building and managing a healthy city involves choosing between a range of options in order to achieve numerous objectives some of which may not give a high priority to health and quality of life. This paper argues that it is necessary to reconsider the construction of housing and urban development in a broad environmental, economic, social and political context that explicitly accounts for health and well-being. It begins with a presentation of some key concepts, definitions and interpretations of health, housing and cities. Then it presents the eleven key principles that the World Health Organization has presented as being the main constituents of healthy cities. It also discusses those prerequisites that are necessary in order to apply these principles in professional practice to achieve the goal of constructing healthy cities. Prior to the conclusion, the author suggests and illustrates a few innovative approaches in several European countries. Hopefully, these kinds of contributions will serve as a catalyst for many more innovative projects in the near future. |
| Bio | Roderick J. Lawrence has a Masters Degree from the University of Cambridge (England) and a Doctorate of Science from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne, Switzerland. Since 1984 he has been a Consultant to the Committee for Housing, Building and Planning of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) in Geneva, and the Urban Affairs Division of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. In 1999 he was appointed chairperson of the Evaluation Advisory Committee of the Healthy Cities Project in the WHO-European Region. In January 1997 he was nominated to the New York Academy of Science. His research fields include projects funded by the European Commission and the World Health Organization on urban health from a human ecology perspective; anthropological and ecological perspectives and policies for housing, building and urban planning; citizen empowerment and participation; and public and private responsibilities of actors in environmental management and sustainable development. His biography has been included in Marquis Who's Who in the World and Who's Who in Science and Engineering. |
