China - Yale Healthy Cities Leadership Program at West Campus

By: Jon Atherton

A delegation of twenty-five mayors and provincial leaders visited West Campus Thursday as part of the week-long Yale-China Healthy Cities executive leadership program. Guided by the World Health Organization’s Healthy Cities initiative and with a focus on “resilient cities”, the mayors from the Guangdong Province on the coast of the South China Sea coast engaged with Yale faculty, students and experts in public health and urban infrastructure. Curated by Jeannette Ickovics of the Yale School of Public Health, the goal of the program is to broaden awareness, increase knowledge and supplement the skills of these officials who are critical to China’s long-term sustainable development and welfare.

Focusing on the evolution of West Campus from former industrial site to living academic landscape, Chris Incarvito provided an overview of the history and evolution of the Campus as a new hub for Yale’s scientific focus on the challenges of human sustainability. Justin Freiberg led a tour of some of the projects that span the urban and natural environment within the expanded Yale Landscape Lab, covering synergistic collaborations in health science, food systems, ecology, energy systems, entrepreneurship, and land use. To highlight the breadth and connectedness across the seven institutes at West Campus, delegates from the China Mayors Association joined Ian McClure in a tour of the Conservation Laboratory within the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage.