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Urbanization is widely presumed to degrade ecosystem services, but empirical evidence is now challenging these assumptions. We report the first city-wide organic carbon (OC) budget for vegetation and soils, including under impervious surfaces. Urban soil OC storage was significantly greater than in regional agricultural land at equivalent soil depths, however there was no significant difference in storage between soils sampled beneath urban greenspaces and impervious surfaces, at equivalent depths. For a typical U.K. city, total OC storage was 17.6 kg m−2 across the entire urban area (assuming 0 kg m−2 under 15% of land covered by buildings). The majority of OC (82%) was held in soils, with 13% found under impervious surfaces, and 18% stored in vegetation. We reveal that assumptions underpinning current national estimates of ecosystem OC stocks, as required by Kyoto Protocol signatories, are not robust and are likely to have seriously underestimated the contributions of urban areas.

Objectives

To determine the association between the percentage of greenspace in an area and the standardised rate of self‐reported “not good” health, and to explore whether this association holds for areas exhibiting different combinations of urbanity and income deprivation.

Design and setting

Cross‐sectional, ecological study in England.

Participants

All residents of England as at the 2001 Census.

Main outcome measures

Age and sex standardised rate of reporting “not good” health status.

Results

A higher proportion of greenspace in an area was generally associated with better population health. However, this association varied according to the combination of area income deprivation and urbanity. There was no significant association between greenspace and health in higher income suburban and higher income rural areas. In suburban lower income areas, a higher proportion of greenspace was associated with worse health.

Conclusions

Although, in general, higher proportion of greenspace in an area is associated with better health, the association depends on the degree of urbanity and level of income deprivation in an area. One interpretation of these analyses is that quality as well as quantity of greenspace may be significant in determining health benefits.

Soil compaction adversely influences most terrestrial ecosystem services on which humans depend. This global problem, affecting over 68 million ha of agricultural land alone, is a major driver of soil erosion, increases flood frequency and reduces groundwater recharge. Agricultural soil compaction has been intensively studied, but there are no systematic studies investigating the extent of compaction in urban ecosystems, despite the repercussions for ecosystem function. Urban areas are the fastest growing land-use type globally, and are often assumed to have highly compacted soils with compromised functionality. Here, we use bulk density (BD) measurements, taken to 14 cm depth at a citywide scale, to compare the extent of surface soil compaction between different urban greenspace classes and agricultural soils. Urban soils had a wider BD range than agricultural soils, but were significantly less compacted, with 12 per cent lower mean BD to 7 cm depth. Urban soil BD was lowest under trees and shrubs and highest under herbaceous vegetation (e.g. lawns). BD values were similar to many semi-natural habitats, particularly those underlying woody vegetation. These results establish that, across a typical UK city, urban soils were in better physical condition than agricultural soils and can contribute to ecosystem service provision.

The world's human population is becoming concentrated into cities, giving rise to concerns that it is becoming increasingly isolated from nature. Urban public greenspaces form the arena of many people's daily contact with nature and such contact has measurable physical and psychological benefits. Here we show that these psychological benefits increase with the species richness of urban greenspaces. Moreover, we demonstrate that greenspace users can more or less accurately perceive species richness depending on the taxonomic group in question. These results indicate that successful management of urban greenspaces should emphasize biological complexity to enhance human well-being in addition to biodiversity conservation.

Background

Greenspace has the potential to be a vital resource for promoting healthy living for people in urban areas, offering both opportunities for physical activity and wellbeing. Much research has explored the objectively measurable factors within areas to the end of explaining the role of greenspace access in continuing health inequalities. This paper explores the subjective reasons why people in urban areas choose to use, or not use, local public greenspace.

Methods

In-depth interviews with 24 people living in two areas of Glasgow, United Kingdom were conducted, supplemented with participant photography and participatory methods. Data was thematically categorised to explore subjectively experienced facilitators and barriers to greenspace use in urban areas.

Results

From the perspective of current and potential urban greenspace users, access is revealed to be about more than the physical characteristics of neighbourhoods, greenspace resources or objectively measurable features of walkability and connectivity. Subjectively, the idea of walkability includes perceptions of social cohesion at a community level and the level of felt integration and inclusion by individuals in their communities. Individual's feelings of integration and inclusion potentially mitigate the effects of experiential barriers to urban greenspace access, such as evidence of anti-social behaviour.

Conclusions

We conclude that improving access to greenspace for all in urban communities will require more than providing high quality resources such as parks, footpaths, activities and lighting. Physical availability interacts with community contexts already established and a holistic understanding of access is required. A key cultural component of areas and neighbourhoods is the level of social cohesion, a factor that has the potential to reinforce existing health inequalities through shaping differentiated greenspace access between subgroups of the local population.

Most people on the planet live in dense aggregations, and policy directives emphasize green areas within cities to ameliorate some of the problems of urban living. Benefits of urban green spaces range from physical and psychological health to social cohesion, ecosystem service provision and biodiversity conservation. Green space coverage differs enormously among cities, yet little is known about the correlates or geography of this variation. This is important because urbanization is accelerating and the consequences for green space are unclear. Here, we use standardized major axis regression to explore the relationships between urban green space coverage, city area and population size across 386 European cities. We show that green space coverage increases more rapidly than city area, yet declines only weakly as human population density increases. Thus, green space provision within a city is primarily related to city area rather than the number of inhabitants that it serves, or a simple space-filling effect. Thus, compact cities (small size and high density) show very low per capita green space allocation. However, at high levels of urbanicity, the green space network is robust to further city compaction. As cities grow, interactions between people and nature depend increasingly on landscape quality outside formal green space networks, such as street plantings, or the size, composition and management of backyards and gardens.

Ameliorating pressures on the ecological condition of the wider landscape outside of protected areas is a key focus of conservation initiatives in the developed world. In highly urbanized nations, domestic gardens can play a significant role in maintaining biodiversity and facilitating human-wildlife interactions, which benefit personal and societal health and well-being. The extent to which sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors are associated with engagement in wildlife gardening activities remain largely unresolved. Using two household-level survey datasets gathered from across Britain, we determine whether and how the socioeconomic background of a household influences participation in food provision for wild birds, the most popular and widespread form of human-wildlife interaction. A majority of households feed birds (64% across rural and urban areas in England, and 53% within five British study cities). House type, household size and the age of the head of the household were all important predictors of bird feeding, whereas gross annual household income, the occupation of the head of the household, and whether the house is owned or rented were not. In both surveys, the prevalence of bird feeding rose as house type became more detached and as the age of the head of the household increased. A clear, consistent pattern between households of varying size was less evident. When regularity of food provision was examined in the study cities, just 29% of households provided food at least once a week. The proportion of households regularly feeding birds was positively related to the age of the head of the household, but declined with gross annual income. As concerns grow about the lack of engagement between people and the natural environment, such findings are important if conservation organizations are successfully to promote public participation in wildlife gardening specifically and environmentally beneficial behaviour in society more generally.

Compelling evidence of major health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption, physical activity, and outdoor interaction with 'greenspace' have emerged in the past decade - all of which combine to give major potential health benefits from 'grow-your-own' (GYO) in urban areas. However, neither current risk assessment models nor risk management strategies for GYO in allotments and gardens give any consideration to these health benefits, despite their potential often to more than fully compensate the risks. Although urban environments are more contaminated by heavy metals, arsenic, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins than most rural agricultural areas, evidence is lacking for adverse health outcomes of GYO in UK urban areas. Rarely do pollutants in GYO food exceed statutory limits set for commercial food, and few people obtain the majority of their food from GYO. In the UK, soil contamination thresholds triggering closure or remediation of allotment and garden sites are based on precautionary principles, generating 'scares' that may negatively impact public health disproportionately to the actual health risks of exposure to toxins through own-grown food. By contrast, the health benefits of GYO are a direct counterpoint to the escalating public health crisis of 'obesity and sloth' caused by eating an excess of saturated fats, inadequate consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables combined with a lack of exercise. These are now amongst the most important preventable causes of illness and death. The health and wider societal benefits of 'grow-your-own' thus reveal a major limitation in current risk assessment methodologies which, in only considering risks, are unable to predict whether GYO on particular sites will, overall, have positive, negative, or no net effects on human health. This highlights a more general need for a new generation of risk assessment tools that also predict overall consequences for health to more effectively guide risk management in our increasingly risk-averse culture.

Alteration in land use is likely to be a major driver of changes in the distribution of ecosystem services before 2050. In Europe, urbanization will probably be the main cause of land-use change. This increase in urbanization will result in spatial shifts in both supplies of ecosystem services and the beneficiaries of those services; the net outcome of such shifts remains to be determined. Here, we model changes in urban land cover in Britain based on large (16%) projected increases in the human population by 2031, and the consequences for three different services—flood mitigation, agricultural production and carbon storage. We show that under a scenario of densification of urban areas, the combined effect of increasing population and loss of permeable surfaces is likely to result in 1.7 million people living within 1 km of rivers with at least 10 per cent increases in projected peak flows, but that increasing suburban ‘sprawl’ will have little effect on flood mitigation services. Conversely, losses of stored carbon and agricultural production are over three times as high under the sprawl as under the ‘densification’ urban growth scenarios. Our results illustrate the challenges of meeting, but also of predicting, future demands and patterns of ecosystem services in the face of increasing urbanization.

The formation of slums need not be inevitable with rapid urbanization. Such an argument appears to be contradicted by evidence of large slum populations in a large number of developing countries and particularly in rapidly urbanizing regions like Asia. The evidence discussed suggests that city authorities faced with rapid urban development lack the capacity to cope with the diverse demands for infrastructural provision to meet economic and social needs. Not only are strategic planning and intervention major issues in agenda to manage rapid urbanization, but city governments are not effectively linking the economic development trajectory to implications for urban growth and, hence, housing needs. In the following discussion, a case study is presented in support of the argument that city governments have to first recognize and then act to establish the link that is crucial between economic development, urban growth, and housing. This is the agendum that has been largely neglected by city and national governments that have been narrowly focused on economic growth with the consequent proliferation of slum formation as a housing solution.

The formation of slums need not be inevitable with rapid urbanization. Such an argument appears to be contradicted by evidence of large slum populations in a large number of developing countries and particularly in rapidly urbanizing regions like Asia. The evidence discussed suggests that city authorities faced with rapid urban development lack the capacity to cope with the diverse demands for infrastructural provision to meet economic and social needs. Not only are strategic planning and intervention major issues in agenda to manage rapid urbanization, but city governments are not effectively linking the economic development trajectory to implications for urban growth and, hence, housing needs. In the following discussion, a case study is presented in support of the argument that city governments have to first recognize and then act to establish the link that is crucial between economic development, urban growth, and housing. This is the agendum that has been largely neglected by city and national governments that have been narrowly focused on economic growth with the consequent proliferation of slum formation as a housing solution.

A land use regression (LUR) model for the mapping of NO2 concentrations in Ottawa, Canada was created based on data from 29 passive air quality samplers from the City of Ottawa’s National Capital Air Quality Mapping Project and two permanent stations. Model sensitivity was assessed against three spatial representations of population: population at the dissemination area level, population at the dissemination block level and a dasymetrically derived population representation. A spatial database with land use, roads, population, zoning, greenspaces and elevation was created. Polycategorical zoning data were used in dasymetric mapping to spatially focus population data derived from the dissemination blocks to a sub-block level for comparison purposes. Dasymetric population mapping provided no significant LUR model improvement in explained variance when compared to block level population; however, both the former were significantly better than the dissemination area level population representations. However, where block level population is not available or too costly to acquire, our method using polycategorical zoning data provides a viable alternative in LUR modelling endeavours.

Background

The main task is to estimate the qualitative and quantitative contribution of urban territories and precisely of the process of urbanization to the Global Carbon Cycle (GCC). Note that, on the contrary to many investigations that have considered direct anthropogenic emission of CO2(urbanized territories produce ca. 96–98% of it), we are interested in more subtle, and up until the present time, weaker processes associated with the conversion of the surrounding natural ecosystems and landscapes into urban lands. Such conversion inevitably takes place when cities are sprawling and additional "natural" lands are becoming "urbanized".

Results

In order to fulfil this task, we first develop a fundamental model of urban space, since the type of land cover within a city makes a difference for a local carbon cycle. Hence, a city is sub-divided by built-up, „green" (parks, etc.) and informal settlements (favelas) fractions. Another aspect is a sub-division of the additional two regions, which makes the total number reaching eight regions, while the UN divides the world by six. Next, the basic model of the local carbon cycle for urbanized territories is built. We consider two processes: carbon emissions as a result of conversion of natural lands caused by urbanization; and the transformation of carbon flows by "urbanized" ecosystems; when carbon, accumulated by urban vegetation, is exported to the neighbouring territories. The total carbon flow in the model depends, in general, on two groups of parameters. The first includes the NPP, and the sum of living biomass and dead organic matter of ecosystems involved in the process of urbanization, and namely them we calculate here, using a new more realistic approach and taking into account the difference in regional cities' evolution.

Conclusion

There is also another group of parameters, dealing with the areas of urban territories, and their annual increments. A method of dynamic forecasting of these parameters, based on the statistical regression model, was already suggested; nevertheless we shall further develop a new technique based on one idea to use the gamma-distribution. This will allow us to calculate the total carbon balance and to show how urbanization shifts it.

Objective

To estimate behavior-specific effects of several objectively-measured outdoor spaces on different types of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in a large, diverse sample of U.S. adolescents.

Methods

Using data from Wave I (1994–95) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (U.S., n=10,359) and a linked geographic information system, we calculated percent greenspace coverage and distance to the nearest neighborhood and major parks. Using sex-stratified multivariable logistic regression, we modeled reported participation in wheel-based activities, active sports, exercise, and ≥5 MVPA bouts/week as a function of each outdoor space variable, controlling for individual- and neighborhood-level sociodemographics.

Results

Availability of major or neighborhood parks was associated with higher participation in active sports and, in females, wheel-based activity and reporting ≥5 MVPA bouts/week [OR (95% CI): up to 1.71 (1.29. 2.27)]. Greater greenspace coverage was associated with reporting ≥5 MVPA bouts/week in males and females [OR (95% CI): up to 1.62 (1.10, 2.39) for 10.1 to 20% versus ≤10% greenspace] and exercise participation in females [OR (95% CI): up to 1.73 (1.21, 2.49)].

Conclusions

Provision of outdoor spaces may promote different types of physical activities, with potentially greater benefits in female adolescents, who have particularly low physical activity levels.

Urbanization is a global multidimensional process paired with increasing uncertainty due to climate change, migration of people, and changes in the capacity to sustain ecosystem services. This article lays a foundation for discussing transitions in urban governance, which enable cities to navigate change, build capacity to withstand shocks, and use experimentation and innovation in face of uncertainty. Using the three concrete case cities—New Orleans, Cape Town, and Phoenix—the article analyzes thresholds and cross-scale interactions, and expands the scale at which urban resilience has been discussed by integrating the idea from geography that cities form part of “system of cities” (i.e., they cannot be seen as single entities). Based on this, the article argues that urban governance need to harness social networks of urban innovation to sustain ecosystem services, while nurturing discourses that situate the city as part of regional ecosystems. The article broadens the discussion on urban resilience while challenging resilience theory when addressing human-dominated ecosystems. Practical examples of harnessing urban innovation are presented, paired with an agenda for research and policy.

A majority of the world's population will live in urban areas by 2007. The most rapidly urbanizing cities are in less-wealthy nations, and the pace of growth varies among regions. There are few data linking features of cities to the health of populations. We suggest a framework to guide inquiry into features of the urban environment that affect health and well-being. We consider two key dimensions: urbanization and urbanicity. Urbanization refers to change in size, density, and heterogeneity of cities. Urbanicity refers to the impact of living in urban areas at a given time. A review of the published literature suggests that most of the important factors that affect health can be considered within three broad themes: the social environment, the physical environment, and access to health and social services. The development of urban health as a discipline will need to draw on the strengths of diverse academic areas of study (e.g., ecology, epidemiology, sociology). Cross-national research may provide insights about the key features of cities and how urbanization influences population health.

The benefits of good health to individuals and to society are strongly positive, and improving the health of the poor is a key millennium development goal (MDG). A typical health strategy advocated by some calls for increased public spending on health targeted to favor the poor backed by foreign assistance, combined with an international effort to perfect drugs and vaccines to ameliorate the major infectious diseases prevalent in developing nations. However, if the objective is better health outcomes at the least cost and a reduction in urban health inequity, our research suggests that the four most potent policy interventions are: improving access to clean water and sanitation; widely available primary care and health programs aimed at influencing diets and lifestyles; raising the level of education; and better urban land use and transport planning which contains urban sprawl and minimizes the trend towards sedentary living habits. The payoff from these four, in terms of health outcomes especially for those in low-income categories, dwarfs the returns from new drugs and curative hospital-based medicine, although these certainly have their place in a modern urban health system. We find, moreover, that the resource requirements for successful health care policies are likely to depend on an acceleration of economic growth rates, which increase household purchasing power and enlarge the pool of resources available to national and subnational governments to invest in and maintain health-related infrastructure and services. Thus, an acceleration of growth rates may be necessary to sustain a viable urban health strategy, which is equitable, and to ensure steady gains in health outcomes.

The benefits of good health to individuals and to society are strongly positive, and improving the health of the poor is a key millennium development goal (MDG). A typical health strategy advocated by some calls for increased public spending on health targeted to favor the poor backed by foreign assistance, combined with an international effort to perfect drugs and vaccines to ameliorate the major infectious diseases prevalent in developing nations. However, if the objective is better health outcomes at the least cost and a reduction in urban health inequity, our research suggests that the four most potent policy interventions are: improving access to clean water and sanitation; widely available primary care and health programs aimed at influencing diets and lifestyles; raising the level of education; and better urban land use and transport planning which contains urban sprawl and minimizes the trend towards sedentary living habits. The payoff from these four, in terms of health outcomes especially for those in low-income categories, dwarfs the returns from new drugs and curative hospital-based medicine, although these certainly have their place in a modern urban health system. We find, moreover, that the resource requirements for successful health care policies are likely to depend on an acceleration of economic growth rates, which increase household purchasing power and enlarge the pool of resources available to national and subnational governments to invest in and maintain health-related infrastructure and services. Thus, an acceleration of growth rates may be necessary to sustain a viable urban health strategy, which is equitable, and to ensure steady gains in health outcomes.

Background

As the global human population grows and its consumption patterns change, additional land will be needed for living space and agricultural production. A critical question facing global society is how to meet growing human demands for living space, food, fuel, and other materials while sustaining ecosystem services and biodiversity [1].

Methodology/Principal Findings

We spatially allocate two scenarios of 2000 to 2015 global areal change in urban land and cropland at the grid cell-level and measure the impact of this change on the provision of ecosystem services and biodiversity. The models and techniques used to spatially allocate land-use/land-cover (LULC) change and evaluate its impact on ecosystems are relatively simple and transparent [2]. The difference in the magnitude and pattern of cropland expansion across the two scenarios engenders different tradeoffs among crop production, provision of species habitat, and other important ecosystem services such as biomass carbon storage. For example, in one scenario, 5.2 grams of carbon stored in biomass is released for every additional calorie of crop produced across the globe; under the other scenario this tradeoff rate is 13.7. By comparing scenarios and their impacts we can begin to identify the global pattern of cropland and irrigation development that is significant enough to meet future food needs but has less of an impact on ecosystem service and habitat provision.

Conclusions/Significance

Urban area and croplands will expand in the future to meet human needs for living space, livelihoods, and food. In order to jointly provide desired levels of urban land, food production, and ecosystem service and species habitat provision the global society will have to become much more strategic in its allocation of intensively managed land uses. Here we illustrate a method for quickly and transparently evaluating the performance of potential global futures.

Background

Numerous cross-sectional studies have found higher levels of obesity among residents of auto-oriented, sprawling areas compared to residents of more urban areas.

Purpose

The association between neighborhood urban form and 6-year weight change was prospectively analyzed in the Black Women’s Health Study, a cohort study of U.S. black women who enrolled in 1995 and are followed biennially with mailed questionnaires.

Methods

The analysis included 17,968 women who lived in New York City, Chicago, or Los Angeles and were followed from 1995 to 2001. Factor analysis was used to combine variables describing the urban form of participants’ residential neighborhoods into an “urbanicity” score. Mixed linear regression models were used to calculate least-squares means for weight change across quintiles of the urbanicity score. Incidence rate ratios (IRR) and 95% CIs CI for incident obesity in relation to the urbanicity score among women who were not obese at baseline were derived from Cox regression models. All results were adjusted for age, region, lifestyle factors, and neighborhood SES. Analyses were conducted in 2008–2010.

Results

In multivariate analysis, mean weight gain for women in the highest quintile of urbanicity score (most urban) was 0.79 kg less than for those in the lowest quintile, with a significant trend (p=0.003). The IRR for incident obesity in the highest quintile relative to the lowest was 0.83 (95% CI 0.71, 0.97), with a significant trend (p=0.042).

Conclusions

Policies that encourage dense, urban residential development may have a positive role to play in addressing obesity in black women.

The Legal Brazilian Amazon, while the largest rainforest in the world, is also a region where most residents are urban. Despite close linkages between rural and urban processes in the region, rural areas have been the predominant focus of Amazon-based population-environment scholarship. Offering a focus on urban areas within the Brazilian Amazon, this paper examines the emergence of urban hierarchies within the region. Using a combination of nationally representative data and community based surveys, applied to a multivariate cluster methodology (Grade of Membership), we observe the emergence of sub-regional urban networks characterized by economic and political inter-dependency, population movement, and provision of services. These networks link rural areas, small towns, and medium and large cities. We also identify the emergence of medium-size cities as important nodes at a sub-regional level. In all, the work provides insight on the proposed model of ‘disarticulated urbanization’ within the Amazon by calling attention to the increasing role of regional and sub-regional urban networks in shaping the future expansion of land use and population distribution in the Amazon. We conclude with a discussion of implications for increasing intra-regional connectivity and fragmentation of conservation areas and ecosystems in the region.

Urban growth reduces open space in and around cities, impacting biodiversity and ecosystem services. Using land-cover and population data, we examined land consumption and open space loss between 1990 and 2000 for all 274 metropolitan areas in the contiguous United States. Nationally, 1.4 million ha of open space was lost, and the amount lost in a given city was correlated with population growth (r(272) = 0.85, P<0.001). In 2000, cities varied in per capita land consumption by an order of magnitude, from 459 m2/person in New York to 5393 m2/person in Grand Forks, ND. The per capita land consumption (m2/person) of most cities decreased on average over the decade from 1,564 to 1,454 m 2/person, but there was substantial regional variation and some cities even increased. Cities with greater conservation funding or more reform-minded zoning tended to decrease in per capita land consumption more than other cities. The majority of developed area in cities is in low-density neighborhoods housing a small proportion of urban residents, with Gini coefficients that quantify this developed land inequality averaging 0.63. Our results suggest conservation funding and reform-minded zoning decrease per capita open space loss.

Background

Proximity to roadways increases the risk of asthma in developed countries; however, relatively little is known about this relationship in developing countries, where rapid and uncontrolled growth of cities has resulted in urban sprawl and heavy traffic volumes.

Objective

Determine the effect of distance from a heavily transited avenue on asthma symptoms and quantitative respiratory outcome measures in a peri-urban shanty town in Lima, Peru.

Methods

We enrolled 725 adolescents aged 13–15 years, administered a survey on asthma symptoms and measured spirometry, response to allergy skin testing and eNO. We calculated distances from the main avenue for all households and measured indoor PM in 100 households. We used multivariable regression to model the risk of asthma symptoms, risk of atopy, eNO and FEV1/FVC as a function of distance.

Results

Compared against 384 meters, the odds of current asthma symptoms in households living within 100 meters increased by a factor of 2 (p<0.05). The odds of atopy increased by a factor of 1.07 for every 100 meters difference in the distance from the avenue (p=0.03). We found an inverse relationship in pre-bronchodilator FEV1/FVC and distance to the avenue in females (p=0.01) but not in males. We did not find an association between eNO or household PM levels and distance.

Conclusion

Living in close proximity to a high traffic-density avenue in a peri-urban community in Peru was associated with a greater risk of asthma symptoms and atopy. Regulation of mobile source pollutants in peri-urban areas of developing countries may help reduce the burden of asthma symptoms and atopy.

Background

Extreme heat events (EHEs) are increasing in frequency in large U.S. cities and are responsible for a greater annual number of climate-related fatalities, on average, than any other form of extreme weather. In addition, low-density, sprawling patterns of urban development have been associated with enhanced surface temperatures in urbanized areas.

Objectives

In this study. we examined the association between urban form at the level of the metropolitan region and the frequency of EHEs over a five-decade period.

Methods

We employed a widely published sprawl index to measure the association between urban form in 2000 and the mean annual rate of change in EHEs between 1956 and 2005.

Results

We found that the rate of increase in the annual number of EHEs between 1956 and 2005 in the most sprawling metropolitan regions was more than double the rate of increase observed in the most compact metropolitan regions.

Conclusions

The design and management of land use in metropolitan regions may offer an important tool for adapting to the heat-related health effects associated with ongoing climate change.

Efforts to cope with the legacy of our industrial cities--blight, poverty, environmental degradation, ailing communities--have galvanized action across the public and private sectors to move vacant industrial land, also referred to as brownfields, to productive use; to curb sprawling development outside urban areas; and to reinvigorate urban communities. Such efforts, however, may be proceeding without thorough investigations into the environmental health and safety risks associated with industrial brownfields properties and the needs of affected neighborhoods. We describe an approach to characterize vacant and underused industrial and commercial properties in Southeast Baltimore and the health and well being of communities living near these properties. The screening algorithm developed to score and rank properties in Southeast Baltimore (n= 182) showed that these sites are not benign. The historical data revealed a range of hazardous operations, including metal smelting, oil refining, warehousing, and transportation, as well as paints, plastics, and metals manufacturing. The data also identified hazardous substances linked to these properties, including heavy metals, solvents, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, plasticizers, and insecticides, all of which are suspected or recognized toxicants and many of which are persistent in the environment. The health analysis revealed disparities across Southeast Baltimore communities, including excess deaths from respiratory illness (lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, influenza, and pneumonia), total cancers, and a "leading cause of death" index and a spatial and statistical relationship between environmentally degraded brownfields areas and at-risk communities. Brownfields redevelopment is a key component of our national efforts to address environmental justice and health disparities across urban communities and is critical to urban revitalization. Incorporating public health into brownfields-related cleanup and land-use decisions will increase the odds for successful neighborhood redevelopment and long-term public health benefits.