Natalie Godden, Manager of Family & Leisure Services and Bruce Knox, Healthy Communities Fieldworker presented on the Healthy City Strategy, a copy of this presentation is appended to the agenda.
A Healthy City Strategy will be the City’s long-term plan to improve physical, mental, social, and environmental conditions that impact people’s health. Through the Healthy City Strategy, the City of St. John’s is seeking the input from experts on what has been identified as the pillars, goals, assets, and implementation strategies to support a healthy city.
This Healthy City Strategy is still in the making and this first draft is focusing on high level priority areas and how to start to create change in the City. Today the focus is on the language in the main goals and implementation strategies. Members were invited to advise on gaps within the Healthy City Strategy.
The goals were outlined for the Committee:
- Healthy Neighbourhoods and People: A City of complete neighbourhoods where residents feel safe, healthy, and connected to each other - neighbourhoods where people want to live, learn, work, and play.
- Urban Design: A City where resident’s quality of life is improved through healthy design of streets, neighborhoods and public spaces.
- Environment: Connect and preserve parks and open spaces to support equitable access to natural environments.
- Housing: A city with a wide range of affordable, adequate, and accessible housing options that contribute directly to community health, sustainable growth and economic security.
- Inclusion: A diverse city where residents of all ages feel safe, included, connected, with each other and with the city.
- Transportation: An efficient, active and accessible transportation network that gets people where they want to go safely.
Discussion took place and the following was noted:
- All categories should include connection to the form that members must engage with to function in the City, an example of which is elevations within the City. The City has different challenges for mobility - walking ability, movement of car, movement of bike. There should be focus on being proactive in development by considering mobility from one elevation to the next during the development process. Changes can be made to the physical city as a better response to inclusive issues. The Healthy Cities Strategy has been modeled after the Healthy Built Environment linkages toolkit from the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. This model looks specifically on how the built form affects all aspects of healthy city from urban design to access to food and housing etc. The built environment is an overarching umbrella for the Healthy Cities Strategy. In response, it was noted that Newfoundland's geographic remoteness requires special attention to regional issues.
Members were invited to review the discussion guide and provide edits to bring back for discussion at the meeting scheduled for the following week.