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Welcome in Utrecht, Heart of Health

Welcome to the heart of the Netherlands. Welcome to host city Utrecht. This historic university city is popular with visitors and residents. By 2040, the population will have increased by a quarter. The city is making every effort to let green and health grow just as fast.
“Heart of Health” is the motto of the city and region, which was named the most competitive region in Europe. The fourth largest city in the Netherlands has been passionately working on a healthy and green city for years. Green and health is in the DNA of the municipality of Utrecht. Utrecht is the beating heart of a healthy society. With healthy people in a healthy environment, it is a region where companies, institutions and governments work together on knowledge, ideas, solutions, and applications for a sustainably healthier world.
It is Utrecht’s ambition to become the region that contributes most to a healthier world. Green is an essential part of that. For example, Utrecht laid a revolutionary adaptive water system in its new Leidsche Rijn district. It reopened the city canal to make room for water and greenery and for encounters instead of asphalt. The city was named soil animal city of the year, received an international award for the Rijnvliet edible neighbourhood, won an international Green Flag Award for the Maxima Park, and was nominated for the World Green City Awards and the Global Green City Award. Everything Utrecht does, it does together with residents. The green roofs on bus shelters and the Fish Doorbell, for instance, became a great success.

The new Hof van Cartesius residential area will be designed according to the principles of the ‘blue zones’, and the Merwedekanaal zone will have a large new green residential area where only shared cars will be found in the streets. All of them innovative projects that are attracting attention at home and abroad.
Utrecht is a frontrunner when it comes to sustainable mobility. For instance, the city was named the best cycling city in the world. It has the largest bike park in the world, right next to the largest train station in the Netherlands. Utrecht aims to make everything its residents need (work, sports, care, schools, culture, nature) accessible within a ten-minute walk or bike ride.

Participants of the Future Green City World Congress will have every opportunity to get to know Utrecht and its innovative companies, world-class knowledge institutions and progressive public authorities, through the various excursions on foot, by bike, boat, and bus.