Can healthy cities be made really healthy?

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552Digital object identifier for the 'European Research Council' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781) - Digital object identifier for 'Horizon 2020' (http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100007601).Strategies such as the Healthy Cities project aim to place health at the centre of urban interventions.1 Such programmes seek to create cities with adequate housing and public transportation, quality health care, and safe places to exercise and play. However, these common transversal approaches also carry a risk of perverse effects, especially when the effect of market-oriented regulatory processes and uneven dynamics of policy formation are not considered. As a result, the Healthy Cities project and similar approaches, such as the WHO's promoted Health in All Policies, might in some cases bolster rather than reduce established trends toward urban social and health inequities