Healthy Liveable Cities Group Vision and Mission Statements

Vision

Our vision is to create and share knowledge that will build healthy, equitable and sustainable cities.

Mission

Our mission is to conduct innovative interdisciplinary and collaborative research that advances understanding about the connection between health and urban planning to inform and improve policy and practice on how to plan and build healthy, equitable and sustainable cities.

About Our Group

Creating healthy, liveable and sustainable cities is a major challenge in the face of population growth, social inequalities, traffic congestion, peak oil and increases in non-communicable diseases. Planning and delivering better cities is a local, national and global priority.

Healthy and liveable communities provide the basis for social equity, harmony, economic resilience and environmental and social sustainability. Our work contributes to academic scholarship and aims to inform policies and practices to create healthy liveable communities.

Bringing together a multidisciplinary research team, this program examines the influence of city design and planning on health and wellbeing.

The research is developed in partnership with stakeholders to inform best practice policy and planning through the creation of evidence-based liveability indicators.

The team draws from experience in epidemiology, behavioural science, geography, geomatics, psychology and public health. They use a variety of quantitative and qualitative analyses including geospatial analyses, policy analysis and economic evaluation.

Our priority areas are to:

• explore the nexus between place, health and wellbeing, with a particular focus on locational disadvantage,
• examine the extent to which local and state planning policies, including transport, land use and health impact on the social determinants of health,
• influence future policies to improve population outcomes.

We have a strong focus on research translation and engagement, collaborating with communities, government, non-government organisations and the private sector in health, planning, housing and transport.

We are home to the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy, Liveable Communities; and are members of The Australian Prevention Partnership Centre (NHMRC funded and undertaking a National Liveability study); and the Clean Air and Urban Landscape Hub supported through funding from the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Programme (undertaking a Policy-Relevant Urban Liveability Indicators Study).

Our director is Billie Giles-Corti, a Distinguished Professor at RMIT University and Director of its Urban Futures Enabling Capability Platform.

Acknowledgement of Country

The Healthy Liveable Cities Group acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations and the traditional owners and custodians of Country throughout Australia. We recognise their ongoing unceded sovereignty to land, waters and community and acknowledge the wisdom of Ancestors and Elders, both past and present. As a group of researchers focussed on place, we are very committed to supporting the protection of Country by practicing respect and care for community, place and culture in all that we do.