SEI Initiative on City Health and Wellbeing

The SEI Initiative on City Health and Wellbeing focuses on the intersection of urban growth, environmental quality, and resident wellbeing, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Using case studies in Nakuru, Kenya, and Udon Thani, Thailand, the initiative employs a multi-disciplinary approach to study the impact of urban forms, co-design citizen science monitoring, analyze urban metabolism through participatory modelling, and examine governance for urban equity. The goal is to generate evidence that informs holistic decision-making and sustainable urban planning, integrating health and wellbeing with climate change mitigation and resilience.

• Rapid urban growth often occurs faster than infrastructure development and can damage a city's ecological foundations, which in turn undermines the sustainability and wellbeing of its residents.
• Climate change is expected to degrade urban environmental quality by increasing the frequency of flooding, the intensity of heat islands, and shortages of clean water, while also worsening air quality.
• The initiative will conduct detailed case studies in two rapidly growing cities with emerging environmental challenges: Nakuru in Kenya and Udon Thani in Thailand.
• The initiative aims to use an SEI toolkit to assess how urban form and management impact health, wellbeing, and equity, specifically targeting vulnerable groups in informal settlements and utilizing wearable technologies for physiological data.
• The project will test co-designed citizen science approaches to collect data on environmental conditions—such as energy systems, waste streams, water resources, and air pollution—to determine if such data can effectively inform decision-making in low- and middle-income countries.
• The initiative seeks to address data gaps in 'urban metabolism' for secondary cities in low- and middle-income countries, where data on metabolic flows and excluded groups is often missing or outdated.
• The initiative will examine how the co-production of knowledge can improve the governance of low-carbon cities in Africa and Asia, focusing on both formal and informal rules to ensure health and wellbeing benefits reach previously excluded residents.

APA

Cinderby, S. (2018). SEI Initiative on City Health and Wellbeing. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/181219b-gill-cinderby-city-health-wellbeing-brief-1908g-web.pdf

Chicago

Cinderby, Steve. SEI Initiative on City Health and Wellbeing. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2018. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/181219b-gill-cinderby-city-health-wellbeing-brief-1908g-web.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Cinderby |first1=Steve |title=SEI Initiative on City Health and Wellbeing |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=November 2018 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/181219b-gill-cinderby-city-health-wellbeing-brief-1908g-web.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{cinderby2018sei, author = {Cinderby, Steve}, title = {{SEI Initiative on City Health and Wellbeing}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2018}, month = nov, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/181219b-gill-cinderby-city-health-wellbeing-brief-1908g-web.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }