Keeping one health in focus
Who we are
Our history, mission, values,
and amazing team!
Our History
Cities & Health was established in 2017 to support human and planetary health by sharing the latest international research and practice for urban health and health equity.
Unique to this journal is the “City Know-how” section, where authors of original scholarship are asked to provide a one-page lay summary of their research to illustrate its relevance for the practitioner community and to inform city authorities.
Building Health Lab, was established in 2018 to bridge academia with practice through UrbanCare, a systems approach to retrofit neighborhoods. Today BHL is proud to support Cities & Health by developing and managing this City Know-how platform.
Our mission
Our mission is to provide practitioners, researchers and communities with a platform to share, discuss problems to shape solutions from a spatial planning, urban design and physical city governance perspective.
We aim to develop a close relationship with cities, allowing urban researchers and practitioners to test new knowledge for significant impact and accelerate the implmentation of sustainable development goals.
City Know-how team
Committed to impulsing City-Know-how.
Alvaro Valera Sosa
Alvaro is an academic staff in Urban Management at TU Berlin, a Commissioning Editor for the Cities & Health Journal, the proponent and responsible for the City Know-how platform, and the Director and lead researcher of the Building Health Lab.
Marcus Grant
Marcus is Editor-in-Chief Cities & Health Journal, initiator of the City Know-how, and Expert advisor to the European Healthy Cities Network with vast experience working with urban form and natural systems at city and neighbourhood levels.
Hannah Arnett
Hannah Arnett is coproducer of the Human-land, The Environmental Psychology podcast and active collaborator of the Cities & Health Journal as co-guest editor for special issues such as Environmental Psychology in the City.
Silvan Händeler
Silvan has been working as a freelance Art Director and Web Designer ever since graduating from weißensee kunsthochschule berlin. At Building Health Lab he is responsible for the projects‘ visual language and user experience.
Sonia Medina
Sonia is an urban manager from TU-Berlin and an active mobility and gender specialist at Building Health Lab. Previous expereinces include GIZ’s Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) in Mexico.
Anna Au
Anna focuses on the social infrastructure of public health at Building Health Lab and is a standing committee member of the Science and Technology Libraries Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.