World Cities Day 2025
People-centred smart cities
World Cities Day, designated by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 68/239, is celebrated annually on 31 October. It serves as an opportunity to promote the international community’s interest in global urbanization, advance cooperation among countries in addressing urban challenges and contribute to sustainable urban development around the world.
This year’s World Cities Day (WCD) focuses on promoting smart city initiatives that put people at the centre. The concept of a people-centred smart city goes beyond technological advancements and digital innovation. It emphasizes evidence-driven decision-making, integrated urban systems, and participatory governance to make urban areas more inclusive and sustainable.
The World Health Organization (WHO) joins UN partners and global stakeholders in commemorating WCD 2025 by highlighting the critical role of urban health in putting people’s health at the centre of smart transition in cities around the world.
To mark the occasion, WHO is launching a set of new resources that provide strategic frameworks, practical guidance, and capacity-building opportunities to help integrate health across urban policy domains, promoting more comprehensive and coordinated approaches to strengthen health responses to emerging megatrends and evolving policy environments.
Taking a strategic approach to urban health: A guide for decision makers
Building on decades of WHO’s work on urban health, this new guide offers governments and partners a roadmap for acting strategically to link health with major policy priorities such as climate change, health emergencies, digital transformation, and migration. It highlights the shared responsibility across sectors and levels of government to create coherent urban health strategies that make cities and communities more equitable, sustainable, and resilient.
The guide will be officially launched at 13:00 (CET) on World Cities Day (31 October) in a hybrid event. More details of the event can be found below.
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WHO Academy online modules on urban health capacities
The Urban Health Training Course equips practitioners and policymakers with the knowledge, skills, and networks to improve urban health and well-being through a holistic, integrated approach. It focuses on foundational knowledge, collaborative practice, effective engagement, and diagnostic and problem-solving competencies. The course targets those influencing health determinants within and beyond the health sector, including actors shaping physical and social environments.
On World Cities Day 2025, WHO launches the first two of nine modules as a preview of what learners can expect. These modules can be taken individually or discussed in local cross-sector teams, offering a shared opportunity to explore how health can be improved through coordinated action.
- Module 1 – Introduction to urban health: Introduces key concepts defining the urban environment — such as neighbourhoods, density, and land use —and how they shape health. It explores urban health inequities and the structural factors behind them, while examining opportunities and risks cities present, including those related to mental health, chronic and infectious diseases, injuries, violence, and climate change.
- Module 2 – Conceptual models and frameworks for urban health and equity: Explains how conceptual frameworks and models can help make sense of the complex links between urban environments and health. Participants learn how socioeconomic and environmental factors interact through structural and intermediary determinants and examine features of effective interventions that promote health equity in urban settings.
Insights from WHO SEARO on People-Centred Smart Cities
In line with this year’s theme, “People-centred Smart Cities,” the WHO South-East Asia Regional Office (SEARO), together with the Regional Laboratory for Urban Governance for Health and Wellbeing (RL-UGHW) and the WHO Healthy Cities Network, is promoting approaches that place people at the heart of urban digital transformation. Through capacity-building and city-to-city learning, SEARO supports local governments to harness smart technologies for healthier, more resilient, and inclusive cities.
