A Just City is a Healthy City
At CultureHouse, we believe that urban design can be used for the common good, and that good design should be an essential part of the toolkit for social justice. Social justice issues, be they heterosexism or racism or environmental injustice, are influenced by the built environment of our cities. We think that fact should be at the forefront of the minds of designers, planners, and community organizers.
This year, we’re highlighting key academics, activists, books, issues, and theories in the area of justice-focused urban design. We hope that by the end of the year, we’ll all (you included) be a little more knowledgeable on how our work can create the conditions for a just city.
In order to understand the true impact of our environments on our health, we must first demystify health itself. Health has to be taken from something only doctors can understand and only medicine, diets, and workout routines can touch to something we shape through the design of our cities and the organization of our lives. Our two sources for this piece, From Workshop to Waste Magnet: Environmental Inequality in the Philadelphia Region by Diane Sicotte and the Gehl Institute’s report “Inclusive Healthy Places: A Guide to Inclusion and Health in Public Space” will guide us in conceptualizing health in a new way.
Sicotte’s 2016 book historicizes the issue of health in the city — tracing how forces such as industrialization, economic decline, federal regulations, and local politics have created a geography of inequality where low-income communities of color face far greater health risks. As Sicotte describes, the goal of her research is to “explain the reasons for the present-day environmental inequalities in the Philadelphia area by tracing their development through the industrial, social, and environmental history of the area, and ultimately use what was learned about environment inequality in Philadelphia to build a regionally sensitive theory of environmental inequality.” Sicotte finds, in the end, that “in the Philadelphia area, the root causes of environmental inequality are social class disadvantage and white privilege.” The most visible symptom of that inequality is the health problems experienced by those living in environmentally unsafe areas.
The Gehl Institute report offers a different perspective, proposing ways that public spaces can be healthier and more inclusive. Their Inclusive Healthy Places Framework has four key principles: context, process, design & program, and sustain.
Context: “Recognize community context by cultivating knowledge of the existing conditions, assets, and lived experiences that relate to health equity.”
Process: “Support inclusion in the process that shapes public space by promoting civic trust, participation, & social capital.”
Design & Program: “Design & program public space for health equity by improving quality, enhancing access & safety, & inviting diversity.”
Sustain: “Foster social resilience & capacity of local communities to engage with changes in place over time by promoting representation, agency, and stability.”
Both Sicotte and the Gehl Institute show that health needs to be understood as the product of constant interactions between the mind, body, and society. The Gehl Institute report writes that “Day to day, factors like the number of social interactions we experience or the number of minutes we spend using active forms of transportation become the building blocks of good health” (12). The built environment of our cities does not provide adequate opportunities to create those building blocks.
In looking at the intersections of urban design and social justice, I was struck with the connections between transportation and health. Our transportation systems impact health both in the ways it allows for (or suppresses) active transportation and in the side effects of other forms of transportation. If it’s unsafe to walk and bike, people are less active in their everyday life. If, in the case of the Philadelphia-area neighborhoods discussed in Waste Magnets, your streets are filled with diesel-guzzling trucks, you’ll not only want to use active transportation less, but will be forced to breathe in the toxins those trucks emit. Additionally, the noise transportation creates leads to stress and if you don’t have adequate means of transportation, you can’t access healthy food as easily. Our health is interdependent with all other aspects of our lives. The Gehl Institute shows that changing public space will increase positive health indicators; improving our transportation system will do the same.
Waste Magnets also brings issues of health and environmental justice into a regional and global perspective. As discussed in the introductory readings of our exploration (go read them here if you haven’t already), urbanization means that changes are not just occurring in cities, but that those changes in cities ripple out across regions. Waste Magnets brought up the phenomenon of distancing, prompting many questions. When problems are “solved” in cities, where do those problems go? Are they just being outsourced to other areas? How can we solve problems in a way that truly attacks the issue and doesn’t just push it onto another community? These questions force us to consider both what better urban environments will do to suburban and rural areas and the relationship between mid-sized cities and larger global cities.
This is the sixth piece in our series on social justice in urban design. Check out our medium page to read past installments and learn more about our work.
