Unhealthy Neighbourhood “Syndrome”: A Useful Label for Analysing and Providing Advice on Urban Design Decision-Making?

TY - JOUR

T1 - Unhealthy Neighbourhood “Syndrome”:

T2 - A Useful Label for Analysing and Providing Advice on Urban Design Decision-Making?

AU - Al Waer, Husam

AU - Speedie, Joshua

AU - Cooper, Ian

PY - 2021/6/1

Y1 - 2021/6/1

N2 - Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was growing interest in designing healthier neighbourhoods. Adopting this perspective brings attention to how conditions in neighbourhoods (directly and indirectly) affect their inhabitants’ physical health and mental wellbeing. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how to alleviate such conditions through integrated interventions designed to operate specifically at the neighbourhood scale. To address this gap, this paper introduces the term “unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome” (UNS). The conceptual clarity and practical utility offered by using this term are critically examined. The paper contains a rigorous review and critical analysis of academic and grey literature on what are held to be the relationships between key features of the built environment and people’s health and wellbeing. It also examines literature offering advice on how urban designers should make neighbourhoods healthier. It illustrates the complexity of the range of issues involved and the complicated web of top down, bottom up and middling out actors that need to be involved in making decisions about them. Despite having inherent weaknesses, the term “unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome” is judged to be useful. It illustrates how seemingly separate issues operate in urban design, promoted for tackling specific symptoms of ill health, need to be addressed jointly through an integrated programme of parallel work streams operating at the neighbourhood scale. The paper is innovative in identifying the wide cluster of symptoms used to describe unhealthy neighbourhoods in the literature as being a “syndrome”. Its significance lies in its injunction that this syndrome needs to be tackled through integrated streams of remedial action drawing on experience and expertise that lie beyond those offered by the traditional membership of urban design teams. View Full-Text

AB - Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was growing interest in designing healthier neighbourhoods. Adopting this perspective brings attention to how conditions in neighbourhoods (directly and indirectly) affect their inhabitants’ physical health and mental wellbeing. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how to alleviate such conditions through integrated interventions designed to operate specifically at the neighbourhood scale. To address this gap, this paper introduces the term “unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome” (UNS). The conceptual clarity and practical utility offered by using this term are critically examined. The paper contains a rigorous review and critical analysis of academic and grey literature on what are held to be the relationships between key features of the built environment and people’s health and wellbeing. It also examines literature offering advice on how urban designers should make neighbourhoods healthier. It illustrates the complexity of the range of issues involved and the complicated web of top down, bottom up and middling out actors that need to be involved in making decisions about them. Despite having inherent weaknesses, the term “unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome” is judged to be useful. It illustrates how seemingly separate issues operate in urban design, promoted for tackling specific symptoms of ill health, need to be addressed jointly through an integrated programme of parallel work streams operating at the neighbourhood scale. The paper is innovative in identifying the wide cluster of symptoms used to describe unhealthy neighbourhoods in the literature as being a “syndrome”. Its significance lies in its injunction that this syndrome needs to be tackled through integrated streams of remedial action drawing on experience and expertise that lie beyond those offered by the traditional membership of urban design teams. View Full-Text

KW - unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome (UNS)

KW - healthy built environments

KW - neighbourhood

KW - healthy neighbourhood

KW - health and wellbeing

KW - mitigating

KW - symptoms

KW - multi-disciplinary teamwork

KW - Health and wellbeing

KW - Healthy neighbourhood

KW - Multi-disciplinary teamwork

KW - Mitigating

KW - Neighbourhood

KW - Healthy built environments

KW - Symptoms

KW - Unhealthy neighbourhood syndrome (UNS)

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85107953301

U2 - 10.3390/su13116232

DO - 10.3390/su13116232

M3 - Article

SN - 2071-1050

VL - 13

JO - Sustainability

JF - Sustainability

IS - 11

M1 - 6232

ER -