Established indicators of development suggest that, as a group, African countries lag behind their counterparts in other regions with respect to public health. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the public health problems of these countries are rooted in preventable causes associated with hygiene and sanitation. It is customary to attribute the problems that ail Africa to the lack of financial resources. This book deviates from convention by suggesting non-financial factors as the source of sanitation problems on the continent, and argues the need to re-connect urban planning to public health. These two professions are consanguine relatives and emerged to combat the negative externalities of the industrial revolution and concomitant urbanization. However, with the passage of time, the professions drifted apart. Today, more than ever, there is a need for the two to be re-connected. This need is rooted in the increasing complexity of urban problems whose resolution requires interdisciplinary initiatives. To this end, there is hardly any question that urban public health initiatives are unlikely to succeed without the collaboration of both public health and urban planning experts. The book recognizes this truism, and stands as the first major academic work to demonstrate the inextricably intertwined nature of urban planning and urban public health in Africa.

Established indicators of development suggest that, as a group, African countries lag behind their counterparts in other regions with respect to public health. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the public health problems of these countries are rooted in preventable causes associated with hygiene and sanitation. It is customary to attribute the problems that ail Africa to the lack of financial resources. This book deviates from convention by suggesting non-financial factors as the source of sanitation problems on the continent, and argues the need to re-connect urban planning to public health. These two professions are consanguine relatives and emerged to combat the negative externalities of the industrial revolution and concomitant urbanization. However, with the passage of time, the professions drifted apart. Today, more than ever, there is a need for the two to be re-connected. This need is rooted in the increasing complexity of urban problems whose resolution requires interdisciplinary initiatives. To this end, there is hardly any question that urban public health initiatives are unlikely to succeed without the collaboration of both public health and urban planning experts. The book recognizes this truism, and stands as the first major academic work to demonstrate the inextricably intertwined nature of urban planning and urban public health in Africa.

Healthy city planning means seeking ways to eliminate the deep and persistent inequities that plague cities. Yet, as Jason Corburn argues in this book, neither city planning nor public health is currently organized to ensure that today’s cities will be equitable and healthy. Having made the case for what he calls ‘adaptive urban health justice’ in the opening chapter, Corburn briefly reviews the key events, actors, ideologies, institutions and policies that shaped and reshaped the urban public health and planning from the nineteenth century to the present day. He uses two frames to organize this historical review: the view of the city as a field site and as a laboratory. In the second part of the book Corburn uses in-depth case studies of health and planning activities in Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, and Richmond, California to explore the institutions, policies and practices that constitute healthy city planning. These case studies personify some of the characteristics of his ideal of adaptive urban health justice. Each begins with an historical review of the place, its policies and social movements around urban development and public health, and each is an example of the urban poor participating in, shaping, and being impacted by healthy city planning.

Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are unequally confronted with social, economic and environmental challenges, particularly those related with population growth, urban sprawl, and informality. This complex and uneven African urban condition requires an open discussion of past and current urban planning practices and future reforms. Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa gives a broad perspective of the history of urban planning in Sub-Saharan Africa and a critical view of issues, problems, challenges and opportunities confronting urban policy makers. The book examines the rich variety of planning cultures in Africa, offers a unique view on the introduction and development of urban planning in Sub-Saharan Africa, and makes a significant contribution against the tendency to over-generalize Africa’s urban problems and Africa’s urban planning practices. Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa is written for postgraduate students and advanced undergraduates, researchers, planners and other policy makers in the multidisciplinary field of Urban Planning, in particular for those working in Spatial Planning, Architecture, Geography, and History.

Urban planning on the five Lusophone African countries - Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Príncipe - has so far been relatively overlooked in planning literature. Bringing together a team of leading scholars, this book fills the gap by providing an in-depth analysis of key issues in the history of urban planning and discussing the key challenges confronting contemporary urban planning in these countries. The book argues that urban planning is a non-neutral and non-value free kind of public action and, therefore, ideology, planning theories, urban models and the ideological role urban planning has played are some of the key issues addressed. For that reason, the practice of Urban Planning is also seen as the outcome of a complex interrelationship between structure and agency, with the role of key planers being examined in some of the chapters. The findings and insights presented by the contributing authors confirm previous research on urban planning in the colonial and postcolonial periods in Lusophone African countries and at the same time break fresh ground and offer additional insights as new evidence has been collected from archives and in fieldwork carried out by a new generation of researchers. In addition, it outlines possible directions for future research.

Cities in the ancient world, much like in the modern era, were not simply a locus for population and a hub for social, cultural, and economic activity, but were themselves the products of urban practices. This volume draws together two often disparate fields - urban space and human practice - to explore the actors and actions that underpinned ancient cities and to offer unique insights into the lives of those who dwelt there. Placing particular emphasis on social practice theory, the contributions gathered together in this book seek to analyse the development of the city, especially public urban spaces, from the archaic period up to Roman Imperial times. A key focus is on infrastructure, public spaces used for politics (particularly the Forum Romanum), and the role of sanctuaries and the way in which they were shaped by cult activity. Through this unique approach, this volume is able, for the first time, to bring the inhabitants of ancient cities to the fore, and in doing so, to offer key insights into the development of spatial routines, the interaction of these routines with the material setting of a city, and the way in which cities themselves played an important role in shaping the people and practices within them.

In cities around the world, planning and health experts are beginning to understand the role of social and environmental conditions that lead to trauma. By respecting the lived experience of those who were most impacted by harms, some cities have developed innovative solutions for urban trauma. In Cities for Life, public health expert Jason Corburn shares lessons from three of these cities: Richmond, California; Medellín, Colombia; and Nairobi, Kenya. Corburn draws from his work with citizens, activists, and decision-makers in these cities over a ten-year period, as individuals and communities worked to heal from trauma--including from gun violence, housing and food insecurity, poverty, and other harms. Cities for Life is about a new way forward with urban communities that rebuilds our social institutions, practices, and policies to be more focused on healing and health.