Healthy Cities Malta

Planning Authority

About this app

Description
The Healthy Cities mobile app has been developed to promote healthier lifestyles by encouraging walking. The historic city of Senglea provides many opportunities for walking and exercise, with varying levels of physical activity. So, whether you want to take things easy or exert yourself more, there is a walk to suit your needs. To further enhance the walking experience, points of historical and cultural interest have been indicated, together with corresponding physical exercises to add to your walking experience. This app was developed with the support of URBACT, a European exchange and learning programme promoting sustainable urban development.

Functionality
The application has been kept purposely simple in concept. The core feature of the application consists of several digitally mapped routes in Senglea, where users will be able to access the walking routes via the application and choose the preferred route based on the level of difficulty, length of the route and features of historic interest.

User registration page:
> One-time registration either through Facebook, Google or email account;
> Sign Up: username (can be anonymised), gender, age, weight, height (to enable calorie count), locality of residence, nationality) and mandatory Agreement to Data Protection statement; and
> Help and FAQs.

Map page:
> User is given a drop-down list to pick the required locality with the option to use the map offline; and
> Map of the locality.

Routes page:
> Routes are available for the locality accompanied with images and text;
> Routes are classified by level of difficulty, length and user rating using the icons related to each route;
> Examples of exercise routines included for added health benefits.

During the walk:
> Basemap will open the Street Map, having an option to toggle to orthophoto;
> A start and stop option for the beginning and the end of the walk and includes stopwatch function;
> A mapped route with a tracking point, showing your location along the route;
> A counter with number of steps, distance covered and calories used;
> Places of interest with pop-up windows showing short descriptions of the sites; and
> Public transport connections (bus stops, ferry pick up/drop off points), with web links to respective time schedules

End of the walk:
> One can view statistics on the walk carried out;

The application is developed entirely in English since the project is EU funded.