Module description
This course will explore the changing relationships between health, lifestyles and the city in both historical and contemporary contexts across the Global North and South. Focusing on a wide range of case studies, the course will critically examine the emergence of the idea of 'lifestyle' as an explicit public health concern and, in addition, an object of geographic analysis. The creation of lifestyle as a problem to be addressed comes as part of a wider acknowledgement of the capacity of certain features of urban landscapes to perpetuate the risk of certain 'lifestyle' conditions such as obesity that result from an amalgam of factors including sedentary behaviour and poor diets, perpetuated by the risks presented by the places in which people live, work, travel and play. The current policy focus on these chronic conditions renders social, economic and environmental differences within and between neighbourhoods and cities problematic and, in so doing, creates new micro and macro - scale political challenges. As a response to this, 'healthy lifestyles' are increasingly being commodified, bought and sold within cities and this is having a striking influence on consumer trends, but a slightly less clear sway in planning, public health and urban design due to various political, economic and social pressures. As the interplays between health and place become ever more important to the study of health as well as contestations over the most appropriate and efficacious form of policy making; geographical perspectives are starting to claim a definitive and legitimate voice. This is especially the case in research exploring the complexities presented by urban settings and debating the multiple causal pathways that link places and people to both good and poor health outcomes.
Assessment details
Examination (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
- Examine theoretical debates concerning the study of health within geography and the interrelationships between health and the built form.
- Analyse the policy challenges in relation to the efficient and equitable governance of health in a variety of geographical contexts and at a number of scales.
- Explore, through a series of empirical case studies, the contribution of historical, social, economic, political and infrastructural changes to the current problematisation of lifestyles.
- Critically assess the policy, practices and rationale of health promotion within the wider context of changing government attitudes and intervention upon individual lifestyle choices.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate knowledge of theoretical and conceptual debates concerning the study of health within geography.
- Demonstrate knowledge of the historical and contemporary relationships between lifestyles and cities.
- Demonstrate an understanding of social, economic, political and policy issues relating to the current incorporation of 'lifestyle' diseases within public health policy.
- Show an appreciation of the social and political complexity of obesity and health promotion.
- Conduct independent and in - depth analysis of certain aspects of the relationships between cities, health and lifestyles, drawing on both theoretical debates and empirical sources.
- Synthesise a variety of sources and text, including policy, media, literature and survey data, to produce a critical contribution to the debate on health and cities.
Teaching pattern
20hrs lectures