SUMMARY The World Health Organization (WHO)/Euro Healthy

Cities Project has received much attention since the first project cities were selected in 1987. In fact many more cities than can participate showed (and still show) their interest. Thus initiatives have been taken to establish activities similar to the Healthy Cities Project, not only in Europe but all over the world, 'national networks of Healthy Cities ' have developed. The national networks in Europe call themselves 'EURONET, a European network of national Healthy Cities networks. EURONET is not a formal association; how this initiative will develop in the near future is under discus-sion. A national network is an example of a social network, but because of its complexity and different levels of 'networking', is difficult to analyse. However analysis, and evaluation, is needed to review the functioning and impact of the healthy cities idea. To study and analyse Key words: healthy cities; social networks; network analysis the networks in Europe, which are as a whole rather large, a selection has been made to reduce the number of participants (n ~ 14), number of resources (n • — 4) and (categories of) activities (n ~ 9) which were examined The analysis provided information about the develop-ment of the network; among other things it looked at: why they started, who took the initiative, what changes occurred during the period of development, who were the participants at a national level, what activities were undertaken, and the relationship between activities and participants. As expected the findings did not provide a uniform picture of "what a national Healthy Cities network should look like ' nor did they give the recipe of 'how to become a Healthy Cities network'. However, the strength of national networks is that they have the potential to continue the Healthy Cities project aims and objectives, even if the WHO project ever ceases