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The intensity and range of health challenges that people in cities are facing has increased in recent years. This is due in part to a failure to adequately adapt and respond to emergent and expanding global systemic risks, but also to a still-limited understanding of the profound impacts of complexity on urban health. While complexity science is increasingly embraced by the health and urban sciences, it has yet to be functionally incorporated into urban health research, policy, and practice. Accelerating urbanization in a context of escalating environmental constraints will require deeper engagement with complexity, yet also, paradoxically, much swifter, more effective, and more risk-averse decision-making. Meeting these demands will require adopting a science, policy and practice style which is integrative, inclusive, collaborative, systemic, fast, and frugal. We propose transformational shifts in scientific methodology, epistemological and ontological stances, types of rationality, and governance to shift researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and citizens towards a new, complexity-informed science of urban health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Tsinghua-Lancet Commission on healthy cities in China. Topics discussed here include challenges for the protection and promotion of health in cities, better access to health services and improved sanitation, and management of chronic diseases and mental disorders in cities.

An abstract of the article "Simulation Modeling of the Long-Term Evolution of Local Malaria Transmission and Acquired Immunity in the Context of Urban Growth and Urban-Rural Travel," by José G. Sirig and colleagues, presented at a conference titled "Parasite to Prevention: Advances in the Understanding of Malaria" held in Edinburgh, Great Britain from October 20-22, 2010, is presented.

This paper revisits the emission scenarios of the European Commission's 2005 Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution (TSAP) in light of today's knowledge. We review assumptions made in the past on the main drivers of emission changes, i.e., demographic trends, economic growth, changes in the energy intensity of GDP, fuel-switching, and application of dedicated emission control measures. Our analysis shows that for most of these drivers, actual trends have not matched initial expectations. Observed ammonia and sulfur emissions in European Union in 2010 were 10% to 20% lower than projected, while emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter exceeded estimates by 8% to 15%. In general, a higher efficiency of dedicated emission controls compensated for a lower-than-expected decline in total energy consumption as well as a delay in the phase-out of coal. For 2020, updated projections anticipate lower sulfur and nitrogen oxide emissions than those under the 2005 baseline, whereby the degree to which these emissions are lower depends on what assumptions are made for emission controls and new vehicle standards. Projected levels of particulates are about 10% higher, while smaller differences emerge for other pollutants. New emission projections suggest that environmental targets established by the TSAP for the protection of human health, eutrophication and forest acidification will not be met without additional measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]