Bücher der Reihe Urban Health and Wellbeing

These policy briefs summarize research findings and scientific events concerning urban health-related topics that are relevant for public health professionals, urban planners, urban stakeholder groups and the public at large.

This book is a collection of policy briefs produced from research presented at the 16th Conference on Urban Health in Xiamen, China, November 4¿8, 2019, under the theme ¿People Oriented Urbanisation: Transforming Cities for Health and Well-Being¿, co-organized by the Urban Health and Wellbeing (UHWB) programme of the International Science Council (ISC).The UHWB programme takes an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral and systemic view on issues of health and wellbeing in cities which include the urban economy and finance systems, education, employment, mobility and transport, food, energy and water resources, access to public services, urban planning, public spaces and urban green, as well as social inclusion. Contributions to this book have been made by scientists from multidisciplinary research fields.The policy briefs in this book present the background and context of an urban health issue, research findings and recommendations for policy/decision-makers and action-takers. In some cases, they inform about relevant events and developments from the science community or important opinion pieces which address health emergencies, like the current COVID-19 pandemic. The book is intended for citizens and political decision-makers, who are interested in systems perspectives on urban health and wellbeing, examples of how to deal with the increasing complexity of cities and the accompanying environmental and social impacts of increasing urbanization. Furthermore, it hopes to inspire decision-makers to facilitate finding solutions, in order to reach the goal of advancing global urban health and wellbeing.

These policy briefs summarize research findings and scientific events concerning urban health-related topics that are relevant for public health professionals, urban planners, urban stakeholder groups and the public at large.

The 15 international authors of this book live in Brazil, Canada, Cameroon, China, Cuba, European Union, Finland, Gaza Strip, India, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, United Kingdom and the United States of America. The authors are linked to the International Science Council¿s Urban Health and Wellbeing Programme. In this book the authors analyse the management of COVID-19, which started in late 2019, in their cities. They explain their city¿s political, social and economic context, the dynamics of how the pandemic unfolded, drawing on quantitative and visual data, and their reflections on how it was managed. The book concludes with an analysis of the similarities and differences among COVID-19 outcomes in these cities. Using a systems perspective to learn from these experiences can help all cities to improve the governance of pandemics and be better prepared for likely future ones.

This book addresses the transdisciplinary subject of urban green space governance in Chinese cities through political sciences, organization theory, sociology, and new institutional economics lenses, with urban planning and ecology perspectives as research foundation and the science of climate change on health and wellbeing research background. It captivates readers by bringing answers to: 1) Why are urban green spaces such a highly contested subject in climate mitigation and adaptation, particularly in contexts like Chinese cities? 2) Why is it important to govern urban green spaces as common-pool resources? 3) How to design policies/institutions that can maximize the end objectives such as good health, wellbeing, and climate resilience? 4) What can ordinary citizens gain from caring more about greening their cities and contributing to the process? Besides, the methods used in this research-case-based study - qualitative in-depth interviews and qualitative content analysis using the mainstream qualitative data analysis software MaxQDA, are valuable learning sources, especially for junior graduate students. The book features three in-depth case studies with rich interview and illustration materials and a range of graphics of higher analytical quality. Readers both from research professionals to non-academics with a general cultural interest in geography would find this work instructive and informative.