Urban Environmental Health and Climate Change

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue entitled “Urban Environmental Health and Climate Change” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Urban environmental health refers to health challenges that city populations increasingly face in the context of global environmental changes, such as urbanization and climate change. Urbanization as a process of urban change including planned and unplanned development and rapid growth places stress on the natural, built, social, and health environments in which people live, work, and play. Globally, one in three urban dwellers lives in deprived conditions without basic needs met inclduing adequate water, sanitation, electricity, and/or shelter. In the U.S., urban communities face inequalities associated with income, access to housing, transportation, energy, nutritious food, green spaces, and health and social services. The inequality of urban determinants of health reflects a wider landscape of health disparities in cities that include infectious and chronic disease vulnerabilities along with mental health and maternal and children’s health inequities. Black, Indigenous, of Color, and low-wealth communities in particular are subject to disproportionate effects on health including cumulative impacts of pollution and, at the same time, marginalization in environmental decision making. The urban development patterns that concentrate unwanted or polluting land uses near overburdened environmental justice and underserved communities are part of a legacy of environmental racism and injustice that produces inequities, which often concentrate spatially. Environmental injustice stems from structural and institutional forms of racism that manifest in the built environment and entrench the maldistribution of benefits and burdens. Such environments of injustice not only affect an urban community’s health, but also their capacities to cope with and respond to climate change and other environmental hazards.

Climate change threatens urban environmental health via multiple pathways that include regional changes in average climate conditions, more frequent and intense extreme events, increasing climate variability, and rising sea levels, which in turn impact multiple sectors (e.g., water, food, and energy) within urban ecosystems. The most recent IPCC report indicates that cities as heat islands and urbanization enhance the effects of heatwaves and flooding. Furthermore, a changing climate has increased the occurrences of compound extreme events (e.g., concurrent heatwaves and droughts or flooding events). Together, urbanization and climate change aggravate existing environmental health risks and disparities and heighten community-level injustices.

Cities are also engines of innovation and action and, therefore, they present opportunities for urban risk reduction, resilience building, and health adaptation to the dual challenges of urbanization and climate change. Urban strategies and policies that address both environmental change processes and mobilize resources for equity can provide multiple co-benefits for urban environmental health. Critical to these efforts are interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches that consider the multifactorial contexts and complexities of urban systems and environmental health challenges. Furthermore, to achieve environmental health equity and justice, the participation and leadership of the communities most affected by urbanization and climate change is essential in these efforts. Such communities provide innovative and insightful examples of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and community-centered actions and capacity building from which policymakers, practitioners, and societies can learn from.

In this Special Issue, we invite original research manuscripts, reviews, and short communications (preliminary but significant insightful results) that: (a) examine dual impacts of urbanization and climate change on urban environmental health, (b) conceptualize connections among urbanization, environmental justice and health impacts of climate change, (c) contextualize urban environmental health vulnerability, including the inequity of urban determinants of health, (d) investigate links between cumulative environmental impacts, land use patterns (both current and historic) and urban health indicators, (e) explore co-benefits of urban strategies and policies for urban environmental health challenges, and (f) document community-engaged and led approaches and cases that address urban environmental health challenges. There are many forms of community-centered efforts—from community-led efforts to academic–community partnerships or collaborations—so all variations will be considered.

We seek papers that employ quantitative, qualitative, or mixed method analyses from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, but we are particularly interested in interdisciplinary work where public health, social science, and earth system science researchers as well as urban planners collaborate. We encourage papers that focus on spatial analysis, integrated conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and composite indices, and those that incorporate urban health equity and environmental justice. Although the issue highlights urbanization, we also invite studies that examine urban environmental health in the context of urban decline, a phenomenon experienced in former industrial cities (e.g., Detroit, MI). Lastly, we welcome research that considers urban environmental health issues that range from environmental pollution, infectious diseases, chronic conditions, and mental health issues, individually, as well as the co-occurrence of multiple diseases (cluster of health problems, e.g., syndemic).

Dr. Ivan J. Ramírez
Dr. Jieun Lee
Dr. Ana Baptista
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• urban environmental health
• urbanization
• climate change
• environmental justice
• environmental health justice
• urban health equity
• health disparities
• climate and health
• community-based research
• extreme weather
• urban vulnerability
• urban resilience