Healthy Cities: Public Health through Urban Planning

摘要

We are all likely familiar with negative newspaper headlines like these: 'Is living in the suburbs making you fat?', 'Abandoned landfills polluting UK rivers', 'Urgently needed: solution to city gridlock' and 'Crime is committed at a home in England and Wales every 7 SECONDS'. Forplanners, though, they recognise the underlying relationship between public health and the design, development and management of the urban environment suggested by the headlines, and realise how difficult it is to successfully plan cities that are also healthy for the public. Academics and practitioners have been investigating the topic for some time now, trying to shed light on the multiple influences and causes of poor health in cities (consider the sanitary movement of the 1840s, the Garden City movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s, the introduction of new towns in the UK that provided easier access to healthcare in the mid 1900s and the study of neighbourhood walkability and food deserts today). It is within this context that this book may be situated.