Healthy Cities

Monday, January 4, 2010

Life & Death: Where you live matters

A wonderful series of articles recently published in the Contra Costa Times in December 2009 examined the place-based determinants of life and death in the East Bay area of California. Find the series here:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/life-expectancy/life-expectancy/ci_13919582

What was the conclusion of zip-code level health, death, environmental and demographic data? Not surprisingly to many of us...where you live matters for your degree of suffering and length of life. Residents of poor East Oakland die, on average, 16 years before residents of wealthier neighborhoods in the Oakland Hills. These findings are almost identical to the groundbreaking report, Life and Death from Unnatural Causes: Health and Social Inequality in Alameda County.

Importantly, these articles also document that community organizations, Contra Costa Health Services, the California Endowment and others are using a host of strategies to reverse these glaring and disturbing health inequities. Unfortunately, the articles fail to explore the role of urban planning and community development in shaping life chances for urban residents. More on this and the specific activities in Richmond, CA soon.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Slum Upgrading in Nairobi

Our UC Berkeley team of students recently completed research, field work and a report with our partners in Kenya, Pamoja Trust and the University of Nairobi, offering plans and recommendations for upgrading and securing land tenure for slum dwellers in the Mathare Slum of Nairobi. See our web site for more detailed information:
http://sites.google.com/site/mathareucberkeley/Home

Community-University partnerships

Creating more healthy places will require new partnerships between large institutions like universities and communities. There are far too many examples of universities literally bulldozing their neighbors (often the poor and people of color) in the name of "higher education." As importantly, the neighborhoods surrounding many elite universities (e.g., Columbia and West Harlem, Roxbury/Dorchester and Harvard, Baltimore and Johns Hopkins) have not benefited from the jobs, health services and other benefits their university neighbors could provide.

See a short video describing a better way forward to ensure universities are better partners with their neighboring communities:

http://intranet.media.berkeley.edu/videos/~xfers_temp/BESI/