Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Healthy Cities For All!? – An Interdisciplinary Research Group Targeting At Healthy Living Environments Independent Of Social Inequalities

2015; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; Volume: 2015; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1289/isee.2015.2015-1925

2169-2181

Steffen Andreas Schüle, Rehana Shrestha, Raphael N. Sieber, Lisa Waegerle, Ursula Hemetek, Gabriele Bolte, Johannes Flacke, Heike Köckler, Beate Blättner, Sabine Baumgart, Andrea Rüdiger,

Public Health Policies and Education

The research group runs an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and international dialogue among public health and spatial planning experts. Following the concept of environmental justice, the analysis of processes and structures which explain social unequal distribution of environmental burdens is the core theme of this research project. Bringing together theories and concepts of public health and spatial planning for healthy city planning is the overarching goal by focusing on the following issues: Integrating principles of health promotion in instruments of spatial planning, improving participation of socially deprived groups in urban developments, doing epidemiological research on multiple environmental health burdens, learning from international experiences in metropolitan areas, and supporting spatial problem solving with an interactive spatial decision support system. In organized workshops scientists and local experts from two large case study cities in Germany are in a continuous transdisciplinary dialogue. The two cities were chosen because they differ in their social and spatial structures. As a first result, this dialogue revealed two overall foci, a spatial focus considering health relevant land-use mix in residential areas and a socio-demographic focus on the situation of people with a migration background. Besides that, in the more prosperous case study city pressure on open space and land use competition mainly due to lack of housing were predominantly discussed whereas in the old-industrialised case study city segregation processes and their link to the unequal distribution of environmental burdens were identified issues. In conclusion, a transdisciplinary approach of integrating scientists as well as stakeholders from public health and spatial planning is a key issue to facilitate healthy city development.