Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities

The multi-award-winning Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities (GOHSC), co-led from RMIT’s Centre of Urban Research, is a leading global source of evidence-based open access urban policy and spatial indicators. It provides tools that support cities worldwide in measuring, reporting, and tracking progress toward healthy and sustainable urban environments. The indicators measure what matters for healthy and sustainable cities, such as walkability, access to public space, food stores and public transport, urban heat vulnerability, and the quality of policies that support urban health and sustainability.

The GOHSC's 1000 Cities Challenge supports a global network of researchers, practitioners, policymakers and advocates to generate indicator reports and scorecards for their city. By leveraging global open data and a rigorous, standardized measurement approach, the GOHSC provides actionable neighbourhood-level insights and enables comparable city measurement worldwide. Indicator reports, produced in English and local languages, strengthen advocacy capabilities and equip policymakers with the information needed to make evidence-informed decisions and track city planning outcomes. 

• 2016: The Lancet Series on Urban Design, Transport and Health, led by members of the current GOHSC Executive, proposed a conceptual model and a set of globally relevant indicators for assessing the health and sustainability of urban environments.
• 2018: The Global Healthy and Sustainable City-Indicators Collaboration was formed: more than 80 researchers and policymakers across 25 cities in 19 countries testing whether a global surveillance system of city planning policy and spatial indicators was feasible.
• 2022: The Lancet Global Health (LGH) Series on Urban Design, Transport and Health published the proof-of-concept study of 25 cities, demonstrating that policy and spatial indicators could be calculated comparably across diverse cities using open data and open-source software.
• 2022 onwards: The LGH Series was the springboard for launching the GOHSC as a research translation platform. The 1000 Cities Challenge was launched to scale the GOHSC. Reports and scorecards have since been produced for cities in Australasia, Europe, North and South America, Asia and the Middle East.

• 2025 Nobel Sustainability Trust Award for Outstanding Research and Development for Intelligent and Sustainable Urban Solutions
• 2023 Planning Institute of Australia National Award for Planning Research Excellence

The GOHSC is led by an 11-member multi-disciplinary Executive team based across eight countries. It is Co-directed by RMIT’s Dr Melanie Lowe and Professor Erica Hinckson (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand). Dr Lowe is also Co-Head of Policy Indicators.

RMIT's Dr Carl Higgs is Co-Head of Software Development and leads spatial indicator development and translation of the indicators into open-source software that enables indicator measurement for cities internationally. 

Emerita Professor Billie Giles-Corti founded the collaboration and now chairs its International Advisory Board.

Other RMIT contributors have provided expertise in public health, urban planning, spatial analysis and computer science. 

For the GOHSC, RMIT researchers have led development of several spatial indictors related to urban heat, including a global urban heat vulnerability index, and measures of heat exposure, vegetation cover and access to large public green space. The GOHSC also shares policy indicators that assess the presence and quality of policies related to urban heat, including tree canopy, urban greening, and climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction policies.

General enquiries: info@healthysustainablecities.org

For more details, and to access indicator tools and view city reports and scorecards, please visit www.healthysustainablecities.org