Search

Built environment restructuring can improve public health through increased opportunity for healthy behaviors. Behavioral science targets individual health behaviors within place, suggesting the potential to integrate these approaches. This scoping review was one of the first to summarise the impact built environment restructuring has on health outcomes and behaviors and integrate these findings with the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation-Behavior model and Theoretical Domains Framework of behavior change. Potential studies were identified from 12 academic databases in urban design, psychology and public health. Search parameters involved 50 environment types, for example green space or healthy cities, combined with both an intervention (e.g. green infrastructure, active transport) and a measurable health outcome (e.g. exercise, wellbeing). Searches were limited to North America, Europe, or Australia/New Zealand. Of 536 potential studies reviewed against defined inclusion/exclusion criteria, 23 contributed to the findings. Evidence supported the positive influence of restructuring on varied health outcomes, many of which were drivers and domains of health behavior. Most studies indicated a clear contribution to increased physical activity. Recommendations include the need for explicit communication of theories guiding restructuring project design, consideration of health outcomes beyond physical activity, and better investigation of unanticipated barriers to health behaviors arising from built environment restructuring projects.

Human health and planetary health are influenced by city lifestyles, city leadership, and city development. For both, worrying trends are leading to increasing concern and it is imperative that human health and environmental impacts become core foci in urban policy. Changing trajectory will require concerted action; the journal Cities & Health is dedicated to supporting the flow of knowledge, in all directions, to help make this happen. We wish to foster communication between researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, communities, and decision-makers in cities. This is the purpose of the City Know-how section of the journal. ‘Research for city practice’ disseminates lessons from research by explaining key messages for city leaders, communities, and the professions involved in city policy and practice. ‘City shorts’ provide glimpses of what is being attempted or achieved ‘on the ground’ and ’case studies’ are where you will find evaluations of interventions. Last, ‘Commentary and debate’ extends conversations we are having to develop and mobilize much needed new thinking. Join in these conversations. In order to strengthen the community of interest, we would like to include many and varied voices, including those from younger practitioners and researchers who are supporting health and health equity in everyday urban lives.

This article synthesises the challenges faced by the English (urban) spatial planning system to become an enabler of urban health and explores some keys features of the evidence base, policy tools and policy implementation issues that urban planners need to be aware of to become health enablers. It draws on good practice identified in an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) seminar series involving over 500 academic researchers and practitioners between 2015 and 2017. A number of key recommendations emerged out of the project. First, planning and health agendas must align at the local level. Second, the evidence base of health priorities must be locally relevant. Third, robust tools can support the creation of frameworks for delivering health outcomes through planning. And finally, adequate resources are necessary to develop the capacity of key place-making stakeholders.

Newcastle Gateshead in common with other industrial cities in northern England steadily lost population during the post-war period up to the 1990s. Much migration was in response to losses in traditional industries; however, within the conurbation there was also migration from inner city areas to more suburban and rural locations. The result was a "loose" urban housing market with an overall surplus of housing stock. The outcomes of this process were unevenly spread, however and affected neighbourhoods very differently. In the worst cases, areas spiralled out of control into decline and abandonment. Meanwhile, the thrust of UK government policy on housing design and location is to get more people to live in urban, higher density, better quality, developments on reused brownfield land. Can such policies really succeed in places where there is low demand for housing and large numbers of existing properties lie empty and abandoned?, Aeihoros: Essays on Spatial Planning and Development, No. 10 (2007): The Post-Industrial City: New Economies, Spatial Transformations and New Landscapes