Environmental health in the complex city: a co-evolutionary approach

Abstract

While public health and urban planning were closely linked in the past, today both domains are institutionally separate. In most cases, health intersects with spatial planning processes only through obligatory evaluations, such as environmental impact assessments, or restrictive environmental legislation. This institutionalisation of health criteria in most western countries has difficulty in dealing with recent environmental health challenges, leading to continual distrust and conflict between citizens and the government. This impasse has recently been discussed by academics who acknowledge the complexity of both city and health issues. It seems, however, that the full extent of the issue has not been covered yet, leading to recommendations and frameworks that are useful but fixed and retrospective. This paper moves beyond those fixed frameworks to develop a better understanding of the complexity of the current disconnect and explores ideas for a future planning approach, grounded on new ideas of co-evolutionary and adaptive planning.

Keywords:

• public health
• environmental planning
• adaptive planning
• co-evolution

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. PM_x = microscopic particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than x µm.

2. “Emergent, far from equilibrium, requiring enormous energies to maintain themselves, displaying patterns of inequality and saturated flow systems that use capacity in what appear to be barely sustainable but paradoxically resilient networks”.

3. A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems (Rittel and Webber 1973).