Urban Crisis: Public Health at the intersection of economic & social change

This research aims to rethink urban crisis by expanding conceptual and empirical understanding of how crises are governed across the interrelated spheres of health, social, and economic policy. As traditional forms of state service provision are disrupted through state-led restructuring under crisis, the pressure for innovative urban solutions and competition for resources increases. Using Athens, Manchester, and Santiago as case studies, this research will identify the economic, political and social stresses involved in providing spaces of care to the urban poor, who are disproportionately affected by crises, and the policies and politics involved in attempting to manage intersecting urban crises. Urban service innovation has been a key area of development for government, industry, and academia. For example, the UN Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 11, on health and urbanization respectively, have highlighted the importance of a wholistic understanding of the relationship between health, well-being, and sustainable urban environments. Urban health is one of eight key challenges set out by the European Commission's platform on the Future of Cities. Urban Health in Latin America and the Caribbean is a research priority for the International Science Council, and global consultancies such as ARUP have focused on health and care proximities as key in urban development and design.
The findings of the research program will help solidify and expand the evidence base on the links between urban crises, governance, experimentation, and the politics and practices of health and social care. I will make two key contributions. First, the project will make a novel contribution to understanding the spread and effects of state-led restructuring of spaces of health and social care in cities during and after urban crisis, advancing an empirical and conceptual agenda that centres health in understanding the urban politics of crisis. Second it will identify how cities negotiate the difficult task of managing conflicting international, national and local agendas focusing on the tensions between financial stability on the one hand and social sustainability and public health interventions on the other.
This research will compare how national and local governments address crisis in three interrelated spheres: health, social care, and the economy. It will examine the implications for urban politics, governance, and urban experimentation surrounding the policies and the siting of as well as access to public health facilities and spaces of care for low-income communities across the three cities. I will do so by investigating the relationship between urban politics, and the need for increasing local provision of public health services and social care in Athens, Manchester, and Santiago through a relational comparative approach. The research questions that will guide this work are:
1. What forms of urban crisis are manifest in each city? What are the processes of addressing these crises from a national and municipal perspective?
2. How have the practices, politics, and policies surrounding urban crisis and their on-going effects shaped spaces of urban public health and care in each city?
3. What forms of experimentation have emerged in the immediate wake of urban crisis and what are the ongoing effects of this experimentation on spaces of health and social care?
4. How has state provision of urban public health and care changed over time in each city? What have been the main political debates in the cities affected?
5. What, if any, alternative forms of service provision have emerged to manage the effects of crisis and crisis policies on urban health services?