Benchmarking and monitoring of urban design and transport features is crucial to achieving local and international health and sustainability goals. However, most urban indicator frameworks use coarse spatial scales that either only allow between-city comparisons, or require expensive, technical, local spatial analyses for within-city comparisons. This study developed a reusable, open-source urban indicator computational framework using open data to enable consistent local and global comparative analyses. We show this framework by calculating spatial indicators-for 25 diverse cities in 19 countries-of urban design and transport features that support health and sustainability. We link these indicators to cities' policy contexts, and identify populations living above and below critical thresholds for physical activity through walking. Efforts to broaden participation in crowdsourcing data and to calculate globally consistent indicators are essential for planning evidence-informed urban interventions, monitoring policy effects, and learning lessons from peer cities to achieve health, equity, and sustainability goals.

AFIPS Research Group Department of Nursing University of Valencia Valencia Spain

Australian Centre for Public and Population Health Research School of Public Health University of Technology Sydney Sydney NSW Australia; Prevention Research Collaboration School of Public Health Faculty of Medicine and Health University of Sydney Sydney NSW Australia

College of Health Solutions Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory Arizona State University Phoenix AZ USA

Department of Economics and Business University of Vic Central University of Catalonia Vic Spain

Department of Geography Ghent University Ghent Belgium

Department of Geography Rovira i Virgili University Vila seca Spain

Department of Geography School of Philosophy Literature and Human Sciences University of São Paulo São Paulo Brazil; Institute of Advanced Studies University of São Paulo São Paulo Brazil

Department of Geography The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Special Administrative Region China

Department of Geography University of Maiduguri Maiduguri Nigeria

Department of Kinesiology School of Public Health University of Maryland College Park MD USA

Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Natural Learning Initiative College of Design North Carolina State University Raleigh NC USA

Department of Sport Science and Clinical Biomechanics University of Southern Denmark Odense Denmark

Department of Urban Design and Planning Urban Form Lab University of Washington Seattle WA USA

Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis Sol Price School of Public Policy University of Southern California Los Angeles CA USA

Faculty of Physical Culture Palacký University Olomouc Olomouc Czech Republic

Healthy Liveable Cities Lab RMIT University Melbourne VIC Australia

Healthy Liveable Cities Lab RMIT University Melbourne VIC Australia; Telethon Kids Institute The University of Western Australia Perth WA Australia

Human Potential Centre School of Sport and Recreation Auckland University of Technology Auckland New Zealand

ISGlobal Barcelona's Institute for Global Health Barcelona Spain; Department of Geography Rovira i Virgili University Vila seca Spain

Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research Australian Catholic University Melbourne VIC Australia; Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science University of California San Diego CA USA

Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research Australian Catholic University Melbourne VIC Australia; School of Public Health The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong Special Administrative Region China

Melbourne Centre for Cities University of Melbourne Melbourne VIC Australia

Office of the Permanent Secretary for the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration Bangkok Thailand

Prevention Research Center Brown School Washington University in St Louis St Louis MO USA

Research Centre for Architecture Urbanism and Design Lisbon School of Architecture University of Lisbon Lisbon Portugal

School of Natural and Built Environment Queen's University Belfast Belfast UK

School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs Northeastern University Boston MA USA

Transport Health and Urban Design Research Lab Melbourne School of Design University of Melbourne Melbourne VIC Australia

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Determining thresholds for spatial urban design and transport features that support walking to create healthy and sustainable cities: findings from the IPEN Adult study

City planning policies to support health and sustainability: an international comparison of policy indicators for 25 cities