Papers in this issue show how urban centres are among the world’s most healthy and least healthy places to live and work. One considers the limitations of low-cost ‘safe sanitation’ in Chittagong, Dhaka, Nairobi and Hyderabad. Another shows the inequalities in health between the poorest urban quartile and the rest of the urban population for many states and cities in India. Two papers focus on routes to healthy cities, one on addressing the social determinants of health in a Spanish city, the other on utilizing community prevention’s promise to advance health and equity.

Other papers focus on: the failure of politics in India to provide sanitation; the limitations in city competitions in China in motivating public servants to address health issues; understanding inequities and inequalities in health; the difficulties facing a community leader in Guayaquil in affording treatment for breast cancer; and a literature review on ill-health in informal settlements and where urban residents may suffer a health penalty.

The Feedback section includes four papers on youth and the city and three papers on climate change, including one that provides estimates for greenhouse gas emissions per person for over 100 cities.

Information about submitting papers etc can be found at www.environmentandurbanization.org.

Papers more than 2 years old can be downloaded free of charge at http://eau.sagepub.com