Ersilia Verlinghieri

Participatory quantitative health impact assessment of urban and transport planning in cities: a review and research needs

INTRODUCTION Urban and transport planning have large impacts on public health, but these are generally not explicitly considered and/or quantified, partly because there are no comprehensive models, methods and tools readily available. Air pollution, noise, temperature, green space, motor vehicle crashes and physical activity are important pathways linking urban and transport planning and public health. For policy decision-making, it is important to understand and be able to quantify the full-chain from source through pathways to health effects and impacts to substantiate and effectively target actions. In this paper, we aim to provide an overview of recent studies on the health impacts related to urban and transport planning in cities, describe the need for novel participatory quantitative health impact assessments (HIA) and provide recommendations. METHOD To devise our searches and narrative, we were guided by a recent conceptual framework linking urban and transport planning, environmental exposures, behaviour and health. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Science Direct, and references from relevant articles in English language from January 1, 1980, to November 1, 2016, using pre-defined search terms. RESULTS The number of HIA studies is increasing rapidly, but there is lack of participatory integrated and full-chain HIA models, methods and tools. These should be based on the use of a systemic multidisciplinary/multisectorial approach and state-of-the-art methods to address questions such as what are the best, most feasible and needed urban and transport planning policy measures to improve public health in cities? Active citizen support and new forms of communication between experts and citizens and the involvement of all major stakeholders are crucial to find and successfully implement health promoting policy measures. CONCLUSION We provided an overview of the current state-of-the art of HIA in cities and made recommendations for further work. The process on how to get there is as important and will provide answers to many crucial questions on e.g. how different disciplines can effectively work together, how to incorporate citizen and stakeholder opinion into quantitative HIA modelling for urban and transport planning, how different modelling and measurement methods can be effectively integrated, and whether a public health approach can bring about positive changes in urban and transport planning.

Participating in Health: The Healthy Outcomes of Citizen Participation in Urban and Transport Planning

Ringland is crow-brained and crow-funded road tunnelling project for a six billion euro investment that has been completely initiated and developed bottom-up by local citizens. It has been proposed in response to the government’s plan to complete the ring road around the city of Antwerp, with the aim to mitigate its damaging health impacts. What can we, as academics, practitioners and decision-makers, learn from this example? How can we use participation to implement innovative decision-making practices that contribute to the construction of healthy cities? In this chapter I explore possible answers to these questions. Considering in more details the various aspect of the Ringland project and building on the literature on participation in urban and transport planning, I explore the connections between citizens’ participation and health, showing their potentials and limits in an increasingly complex world. After giving some definitions, I consider the wide benefits and limitations of participation recognised by the literature. Subsequently, I provide a summary of the main planning traditions and consider how they approach participation in different ways. I then consider the specific benefits that participation can offer to health and reflect on which would be the most appropriate planning settings and practices to allow these to take place. I propose that we build a culture of participation across society in order to do so. I conclude with a reflection on the role of academics and of participatory research to support the construction of a culture of participation.

The Role of Health Impact Assessment for Shaping Policies and Making Cities Healthier

Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is an important tools to integrate evidence in the decision-making process, and introduce health in all policies. In urban and transport planning, HIAs have been used generally to assess qualitatively urban interventions rather than offering more useful/powerful estimations to stakeholders through quantitative approaches. HIAs could answer various pressing questions such as: what are the best and most feasible urban and transport planning policy measures to improve public health in cities? Also the process on how to get there is often as important as the actual output of the HIA, as the process may provide answers to important questions as to how different disciplines/sectors can effectively work together and develop a common language, how to best incorporate citizen and stakeholder, how different modelling and measurement methods can be effectively integrated, and whether a public health approach could make changes in urban and transport planning.