Resistant cities: Urban Planning as Means for Pandemic Prevention

Urban Planning as Means for Pandemic Prevention (RECIPE)

The general objective of the RECIPE-STN-project is to explore in a multidisciplinary way the role of urban living environments and the potential of evidence-based urban planning in anticipation and prevention of infectious disease epidemic and thus pandemic outbreaks. The project performed at Luke aims to provide new scientific knowledge on plant and microbial diversity in various green environments within urban the areas of Oulu, Helsinki and Kuopio. The obtained biodiversity values will be connected to the classification of green spaces of these cities. Furthermore, the project aims to connect biodiversity values of various urban green spaces to the health traits of urban residents using population-based cohort data. The selection of the Oulu and Helsinki study sites is based on data from large population- based cohorts from Northern Finland (NFBC1966 and NFBC1986). We choose sites from the pilot cities as they inhabit the highest number of cohort individuals and represent varying geospatial locations in Finland.