Review: In the last few years, the approach “Urban Health” is gaining popularity in the world practice of municipal and state administration. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that in structuring any policies and making any decisions, priority is given to health and wellbeing of the population, and the key indicator of effectiveness is life expectancy. There is a range of works dedicated to ratio between physical and mental health of citizens and organization of the urban environment. However, the yet only Russian-language research on the practice of using Urban Health approach in different countries, the Russian experience is presented by Moscow alone and without emphasis on architecture and urban planning. The author systematizes the existing health-saving technologies that can serve as the foundation for environmental development programs; successful urban development programs of other countries are compared with such in Moscow and Russia, which allows revealing the merits and flaws of the latter. The conclusion is made that despite a set of measures presented in multiple programs and documents, which are aimed at improvement of health and well-being of the citizens, life expectancy and mitigation of risk of various diseases, do not appear as the goals of these programs. Therefore, urban planning policy can objectively be much more health-saving; the rhetoric and optics of the Urban Health approach, being articulated by the government,  can be more comprehensible for the population than the environmental agenda, and thus, promote the necessary urban changes.

Keywords: urban improvement, active design, pedestrianization,, urban renewal, urban health, health-saving technologies, urban environment, urban policy, health, sustainable development