Josef Konvitz, Chair of PASCAL International Observatory, has been appointed to the Scientific Committee of the WHO European Healthy Cities Network. During the next four years, he will be responsible for several cities and a national network in the programme.

The issues of health, equity, and sustainable development at the sub-national level are classic in any discussion of intersectoral collaboration and multi-level governance. In 1996, Konvitz co-organised a WHO-OECD conference on healthy cities in Madrid when issues of disparities, urban form, the quality of the built environment, transportation, degraded land sites, waste management, and much else were on the agenda.

But this is 2021, in a global pandemic that has opened an unprecedented debate about the future of cities. Never has the challenge of evidence-based decision-making been more urgent. Indicators, monitoring frameworks, evaluation methodology, and all the other tools must be subject to careful scrutiny and held to a high standard of transparency.