Toward the Healthy City: People, Places, and the Politics of Urban Planning (Urban and Industrial Environments) [Paperback]

Jason Corburn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262513072 | ISBN-13: 978-0262513074 | Publication Date: September 4, 2009 | Edition: 1

A call to reconnect the fields of urban planning and public health that offers a new decision-making framework for healthy city planning.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Corburn's Toward the Healthy City shows us how to reunite urban planning and public health. This is the great partnership that was responsible for major advances in health in the early 20th century. As Corburn reveals, by recreating this partnership we can overcome health disparities, chronic disease, and other pressing health problems of our era. This book is a must for everyone interested in health, cities, planning and our planet's future."--Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University

Jason Corburn is Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice (MIT Press, 2005), winner of the 2007 Paul Davidoff Award, given by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning.

"A wonderfully readable, incisive analysis of the common ground between planning and public health. Toward the Healthy City reminds us that both environmental and social determinants of health must be considered, and that physical, political, and institutional changes must all be on the agenda, if we are to achieve healthy cities for all, especially for the most vulnerable among us."--Howard Frumkin, Director, National Center for Environmental Health, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

(Howard Frumkin )

About the Author

In distressed urban neighborhoods where residential segregation concentrates poverty, liquor stores outnumber supermarkets, toxic sites are next to playgrounds, and more money is spent on prisons than schools, residents also suffer disproportionately from disease and premature death. Recognizing that city environments and the planning processes that shape them are powerful determinants of population health, urban planners today are beginning to take on the added challenge of revitalizing neglected urban neighborhoods in ways that improve health and promote greater equity. In Toward the Healthy City, Jason Corburn argues that city planning must return to its roots in public health and social justice. The first book to provide a detailed account of how city planning and public health practices can reconnect to address health disparities, Toward the Healthy City offers a new decision-making framework called "healthy city planning" that reframes traditional planning and development issues and offers a new scientific evidence base for participatory action, coalition building, and ongoing monitoring. To show healthy city planning in action, Corburn examines collaborations between government agencies and community coalitions in the San Francisco Bay area, including efforts to link environmental justice, residents' chronic illnesses, housing and real estate development projects, and planning processes with public health. Initiatives like these, Corburn points out, go well beyond recent attempts by urban planners to promote public health by changing the design of cities to encourage physical activity. Corburn argues for a broader conception of healthy urban governance that addresses the root causes of health inequities.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; 1 edition (September 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262513072
• ISBN-13: 978-0262513074
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #731,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jason Corburn is Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Corburn also co-directs Berkeley's joint Masters in City Planning and Masters in Public Health degree program. He is the author of two award winning books focused on urban health equity: Toward the Healthy City (MIT Press, 2009) and Street Science (MIT Press, 2005). His teaching, research and practice focuses on working with community-based organizations to link public health, city planning and social justice in cities around the world.