Minister-President of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, responsible for Urban Development and Urban Renewal
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"Hosting an international Congress on healthy cities is, in light of the current housing crisis, symbolically very important. The city of the future is the one where neighbourhoods can breathe. A full urban life starts with access to affordable and healthy housing for all."
Minister of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, responsible for Climate Change, Environment, Energy, Participatory Democracy and Health
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As Minister of Climate Transition, Environment, Social matters and Health, I deeply believe that cities have to be healthy and to provide well-being. However, health is not just about the provision of care, it is also very important to have a varied range of services accessible to all, in all neighborhoods. A healthy city is first and foremost a city which guarantees a healthy living environment to all its inhabitants and users. A green city where we breathe a clean air because it has been freed from its dependence on fossil fuels, which causes actually 7 millions of premature deaths per year, according to the WHO. We have seen it among others with the Covid-19 pandemic: the climate change threatens our health. Around the world, zoonotic diseases, floods and heat waves are rising. To build healthy cities, we thus have to act urgently against climate change. Therefore the Brussels region has set itself the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050 and is redesigning its territory in that sense to ensure a liveable future for all living species as the future of mankind is inextricably linked to the preservation of biodiversity.
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