The WHO European Healthy Cities Network engages local governments in developing health
through a process of political commitment, institutional change, capacity-building, partnership-based
planning and innovative projects. It promotes comprehensive and systematic policy and planning
with a special emphasis on inequality in health and urban poverty, the needs of vulnerable groups,
participatory governance and the social, economic and environmental determinants of health. It
strives to include health considerations in urban economic, regeneration and development efforts.