Editorial

摘要

As a researcher whose primary interest is the relationship between the built environment and human health and well- being, I am mindful of the power of mapping situations accurately. John Snow's ground-breaking and meticulous mapping of cholera cases in 1854 enabled him to trace the source of the disease to the contaminated Broad Street water pump (Snow, 1855). Today we continue to map out contemporary health issues such as obesity or harm caused by alcohol - although in ways John Snow might only have imagined - to show that health inequalities exist across many spatial scales, from different neighbourhoods within the same city up to the global. It was with interest therefore that I encountered two papers in this issue of Urban Design and Planning which emphasise the power of mapping - Mannakkara and Wilkinson's investigations into post-disaster land-use planning practices (Mannakkara and Wilkinson, 2013) and Lindholst et al.'s analysis of recreational experiences (Lindholst et al, 2013). However, before turning to these, we have three diverse papers that are linked (albeit obliquely in the case of the briefing paper) by a concern with transportation.