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Content:

Health issues have shaped the history of cities, but it is cities that will define the future of our health. This module looks at some of the current and emerging trends in conceptualising and planning for urban health. It provides an interdisciplinary and critical perspective on the relationships between urban processes and health disparities in cities across the world but with a particular focus on the Global South.

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We explore the multiple ways in which age, race and gender shape the physical and mental health of urban populations and outline some of the urban health initiatives that have attempted to address health inequalities.

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We critically examine some of the formal and informal mechanisms and institutions that govern mental and physical health. And assess how disparities in urban health might be addressed not only at the city level, but also at national and global scales.

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The module examines some of the ways that policy initiatives intend to make cities more liveable and healthful for their inhabitants and how developments in urbanisation might pose future challenges for health.

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Finally, we consider how socially just policymaking, well-targeted community action, sensitive city planning, and urban design might offer the pathways, solutions and innovations required to address physical and mental ill-health and health inequalities.ÌýÌý

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Teaching delivery:

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This module is taught over nine weekly sessions and involves lectures, talks with expert practitioners, seminar discussions, group debates and student-led presentations.

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Indicative Topics:

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• Pollution, Urban Health, and Environmental Justice
• Cities, Climate Change and Urban Health
• Disabilities and the City
• Infectious Diseases and the City
• The Healthy Urban Citizen and Wellbeing Governance
• Urban Mental Health
• Aging Populations in the City

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The topics in this module are animated by key ideas in urban health scholarship including social and environmental justice, planetary health, decolonisation, discourse studies, governance, and biopsychosocial perspectives.

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We draw from a range of disciplines, including public health, human geography, political science, anthropology, sociology, urban design, planning and development studies. Concepts and theories are critically explored through case studies and real-world examples.

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Module Objectives:

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Upon completion of the module, participants will have:

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• An overview of some of the principles and practices of public health institutions in both formal and informal urban contexts.
• An in-depth understanding of relationships between urban processes and infectious and non-communicable diseases and how these relationships play out socio-spatially across different populations and in different geographies.
• An in-depth knowledge of how urban health disparities are informed by physical, social-economic and political environments.
• A critical understanding of how global, national and local processes shape, and are shaped by health outcomes at the urban level.
• A critical appreciation of some of the methodological and conceptual challenges facing the study of urban health.
• The ability to comprehend and critically apply key concepts in urban health to case studies.