[ Cork City Development Plan 2022-2028, Section 15(2) Two-Year Progress Report ]
One of the key principles set out in paragraph 1.5 of the City Development Plan for Cork to achieve its strategic vision of being a world class city is to build on the city’s status as a WHO designated Healthy City to be a resilient, inclusive, healthy and age-friendly city offering an inclusive and vibrant environment for all whilst promoting healthy living and wellbeing. The promotion of health and wellbeing is threaded throughout the Plan and features in several of the Plan’s 9 Strategic Objectives. Targets 3.4 and 3.9 have been contextualised to Cork City in objectives for minimizing noise, air, water and soil pollution. Objective 9.20 supports in the implementation of the Cork Agglomeration Noise Action Plan, the latest update of which – the Cork Agglomeration Noise Action Plan 2024-2028 – is at Draft stage at the time of writing. This Draft Noise Action Plan refers to the WHO’s Environmental Noise Guidelines from 2018 and sets out that noise can have a significant and disruptive effect on everyday life and wellbeing. Objective 9.18 seeks improved air quality and supports the Cork City Council Air Quality Strategy 2021-2026, Ireland’s first local authority air quality strategy. The Cork City Air Quality Dashboard www.corkairquality.ie provides live air quality monitoring statistics to the public from a number of monitoring stations across the city. A suite of objectives in chapter 9 address runoff, sustainable urban drainage systems and water pollution prevention. Paragraph 11.271 requires major development proposals to consider adequate soil protection measures to prevent against soil and groundwater contamination. In relation to Targets 3.6 and 3.8 the City Development Plan seeks to ensure that new development including new strategic and enabling infrastructure maximises, or does not adversely impact, traffic and pedestrian safety, and supports the sustainable provision and expansion of hospitals and other healthcare facilities and support Cork City's designation as a WHO Healthy City. The Plan includes objectives promoting and seeking greater modal split toward active (cycling and walking) and public transport modes, and the provision of new and improved cycleways and greenways. The Plan offers broad support for hospitals and healthcare facilities and these uses are facilitated in a broad range of land-use zonings in the Plan. Further highlighting Cork City Council’s commitment to health and wellbeing, the City Development Plan is currently (at the time of writing) part of a leading research project led by UCC and including the HSE and the EPA to develop a health impact assessment implementation model (HIA-IM) for Ireland. Part of the process involves a health impact assessment of the City Development Plan. This will be the first development plan in the country to be subject to health impact assessment, while the HIA-IM is intended to inform the next city development plan. The other plan involved in this research project is the National Climate Action Plan. The HIA on each of these two Plans will be undertaken using the latest Irish health impact assessment guidance issued by the Institute of Public Health in Ireland, in 2021. Health impact assessment is a way of applying a health lens to a project, programme, plan or policy, and involves collaboration across a range of key stakeholders.
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