Abstract
Urbanization and transport have a direct effect on public health. A transdisciplinary approach is proposed and illustrated to tackle the general problem of these environmental stressors and public health. Processes driving urban development and environmental stressors are identified. Urbanization, transport and public health literature is reviewed and environmental stressors are classified into their impacts and which group is affected, the geographical scale and potential inventions. Climate change and health impacts are identified as a research theme. From an Australian perspective, further areas for research are identified.
Highlights
Health can be viewed as a central criterion for judging human sustainability [1]
As stated by Hood [44] “decreased efficiency in the blood-brain barrier and the cardiovascular, pulmonary, immune, musculoskeletal, hepatic, renal, and gastrointestinal systems can alter response to environmental agents, leading to heightened susceptibility to the toxic effects of air pollution, pesticides, and other exogenous threats to health.”. At this point of the exposition, it is important to recognize that, across the world, there are widely varying climate zones and socio-economic variations and human activity patterns that will influence the local details of the environmental stressors, the relative importance attached to them given the values of each society and the responses by the respective public and private sectors of the economy depending on the governance and political economy of each region
Geographic information systems (GIS) provide ideal platforms for the convergence of locating environmental stressors and public health information the natural and manmade environment. They are highly suitable for analyzing epidemiological data, revealing trends and interrelationships that would be more difficult to discover in tabular format
Summary
A complete understanding of this dimension of human health requires knowledge about the effects of global economic and climate change on: ecosystem sustainability and on human health; on the effects of pollutants within human communities; on the interaction between environment, development, and human health; and on the management of solutions to these challenges across local, regional, and global scales Against this perspective on health and sustainability the scope of this review is restricted to urban development and transport as potential environmental stressors. The classification of this diffuse literature is summarized with particular emphasis on the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of those affected, on the location and geographical scale of the environmental stressor, and on the broad categories of types of policies, programs and solutions. These are countryspecific suggestions they probably have relevance to other countries, noting that Australia is a liberal democratic country and suggested methodologies and solutions may not be transferable to many parts of the urbanized world
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