Urban Transitions 2026

Cities suffer from many environmental, climate change and health problems. Poor urban and transport planning is part of the problem, but can also be part of the solution. There is great potential for improvement through targeted and integrated policies. However, the urban environment is a complex interlinked system. Decision-makers need enhanced understanding of the linkages involved, cities need better knowledge, and multi-sectorial approaches are needed to tackle the current problems.

Urban Transitions 2026 will address science and practice and provide pathways to low carbon, liveable, equitable and healthy cities.

Present your research at Urban Transitions 2026: Abstracts are invited for talks and posters to supplement the invited lectures by 8 May 2026.

Conference deadlines

Abstract deadline – 8 May 2026

Author notification deadline – 1 July 2026

Early booking and author registration deadline – 17 July 2026

Scope of the conference

The majority of people live in cities and urbanization is continuing worldwide. Cities have long been known to be society’s predominant engine of innovation and wealth creation, yet they are also a main source of pollution and disease. There has been a transition to non communicable diseases (NCDs) in many low and medium income countries, partly due to urbanization and related environmental exposures and lifestyles. Furthermore, climate change is a driver for change.  Cities are often characterized by high levels of environmental exposures such as air pollution and noise, heat island effects and lack of green space and physical activity levels.

Emerging evidence suggests that (poor) urban and transport planning may be to a large extent responsible for this and may have a large impact on mortality and morbidity in cities.  Furthermore the impacts are not equally distributed among the population with the more the more deprived often suffering disproportionately.

The Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda have given new impetus to improve our cities.  Paradigms such as sustainable cities, liveable cities, resilient cities, smart cities and healthy cities have been promoted successfully by different communities, but need more alignment to make systematic improvements to cities.  New concepts such as car free cities, compact cities, low carbon cities and nature based solutions and new technologies such as electric vehicles and (shared) autonomous vehicles have been introduced and may improve the urban environment and thereby health.

Decision-makers need not only better data on the complexity of factors in environmental and developmental processes affecting human health, but also enhanced understanding of the linkages to be able to know at which level to target their actions.  Cities have come to the forefront of providing solutions for issues such as climate change, which has co-benefits on health, but still need better knowledge. City organisations  (for example C40, Healthy Polis, ICLEI) play an important role.

Multi-sectorial and multi-disciplinary approaches are needed to tackle the current problems and therefore we have organized an international conference with world leading experts on urban and transport planning, architecture, environmental science and exposures, physical activity, climate change, public health to discuss the current status and challenges and solutions in cities.

The objective of the conference is to promote healthy urban development by bringing together different sectors and disciplines (e.g. urban and transport planning, architecture, green space management, environmental exposure assessment, environmental epidemiology, physical activity, climate change, and public health and governance) working within cities and presenting the state of the art research and providing solutions to and future healthy visions of our cities.

This conference will be of interest to researchers, policy makers and practitioners in:

• Urban planning

• Architecture

• Transport planning

• Environmental science and exposure assessment

• Climate change

• Public health (epidemiologists, health impact assessment)

• Citizens science

• Social science

• Policy and decision making

• Cities opens in new tab/window

• Environment International opens in new tab/window

• Journal of Transport & Health opens in new tab/window

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