The quality of life in cities is crucial.

Living in a city comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The jobs and cultural activities on offer make cities attractive places to live, but the downside is traffic jams and pollution. The quality of life in cities is going to directly affect more and more people because urbanization is increasing worldwide every year.

The quality of life in our cities is an issue on which The Philips Center for Health and Well-being is concentrating. Our immediate living environment does, after all, have a huge effect on both our health and well-being. When surveyed in our Philips Index Research, for example, 75% of Brits said that their community had a important impact on their health and well-being.

The essential basic conditions − drinking water, clean air, sewers, waste collection, energy supplies − play an important role in determining the quality of life in cities, but there are also other factors such as safety, social cohesion, access to healthcare and mobility. Inclusion of all of its inhabitants and cultivating diversity are also crucial challenges in making cities livable.

We are looking at cities around the globe and will be focusing a lot of attention on Asia. In countries like China and India literally hundreds of millions of people will move out of the countryside and into the cities. This adds a whole new dimension to the problem − how do you create, from scratch, sustainable cities that can house millions of people? How do existing cities copy with an influx of citizens that can be as much as 6000 people per day?

You could say we are a think-tank, but one with a practical aim: we are not here to develop abstract theories about the quality of life in cities. Our ultimate aim is to deliver simple solutions or recommendations for the complex challenges faced.