Abstract
Globally, urban populations are growing rapidly, and in most cases their demands for resources are beyond current limits of sustainability. Cities are therefore critical for achieving national and international sustainability objectives, such as greenhouse gas reduction. Improving sustainability may also provide opportunities for urban population health co-benefits by reducing unhealthy exposures and behaviours. However, there is currently sparse empirical evidence on the degree to which city characteristics are associated with variations in health-related exposures, behaviours and sustainability. This paper examines the feasibility of aggregating empirical data relating to sustainability and health for global cities. An initial scoping review of existing English-language datasets and networks is performed. Resulting datasets are analysed for data types, collection method, and the distribution of contributing cities across climates, population sizes, and wealth. The review indicates datasets are populated using inconsistent methodologies and metrics and have poor overlap of cities between them. Data and organisations tend to be biased towards larger and wealthier cities, and concentrated in Europe and North America. Therefore, despite vast amounts of available data, limitations of reliability, representativeness, and disparate sources mean researchers are faced with significant obstacles when aggregating data to analyse the sustainability and health of globally representative samples of cities.
Highlights
The world is currently undergoing a period of rapid urbanisation, with the global urban population overtaking the rural population in 2007, and this trend set to continue into the future [1]
We evaluate the feasibility of combining existing datasets to provide a basis for empirical analyses of how city characteristics relate to sustainability and health
An initial scoping review of available datasets and organisations related to health and sustainability in global cities is performed, identifying key global initiatives and summarizing their scope, number of cities, and the availability of their data
Summary
The world is currently undergoing a period of rapid urbanisation, with the global urban population overtaking the rural population in 2007, and this trend set to continue into the future [1]. The urban population is predicted to grow by an additional 2.5 billion people by 2050, with growth high in Africa and Asia [1]. Due to their population share, economic influence, and resource requirements, cities are likely to play a key role in achieving national and global sustainable development targets. This rapid expansion of cities—in terms of number, population size, and built area—presents challenges as well as opportunities to influence their sustainable development at nascent stages in their growth. Urban policies are an important driver of population health and wellbeing—but the potential is often unrealized [3]
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