This course is designed to acquaint students with the key principles of sustainable urban health and to identify the relationships between health, urban planning and development approaches using real-world examples. Students will develop their own solutions to a real-world problem in support of urban health tools. Specifically, the course is based on a healthy urban development scenario for the “Weberplatz“ in the City of Essen. The “Weberplatz “and its surrounding in the City Nord are often abundant and not very popular for people to gather or walk by. Although this public open space has a lot to offer and is close to the University Campus Essen, it is not clear why visitors are missing – especially students.

Your task is to discover the underlying problems by analyzing the public open space and its surrounding. You are expected to find solutions and develop own concepts that make the place more attractive for students. Identifying the possible reasons for abandonment of the square will be coupled with developing the solutions based on the healthy urban development approach. Furthermore, your task will be to assess your solutions by using the Healthy Urban Development Checklist (HUD). By the end of the course you are expected to present your solutions to the problem by integrating different tools and methods. There is an expanding range of tools that can be used to plan, develop and propose interventions and which can change the urban environment to create better opportunities for health.