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76418-01 - Course: Urban Health and Spatial Justice (3 CP)
| Semester | fall semester 2025 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Vitor Pessoa Colombo (vitor.pessoacolombo@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | How do cities shape health outcomes, and how do patterns of spatial injustice contribute to health inequities? This course introduces students to the emerging field of Urban Health, which examines how social and physical urban characteristics influence health and disease, and Spatial Justice, a concept that links class struggle to space. Ultimately, the course aims to stimulate debates on how social disparities materialize in urban spaces and, eventually, lead to inequitable distributions of the burden of disease. Students will develop a conceptual framework to assess direct and indirect connections between the physical and social environments and health outcomes. Through evidence-based analysis supported by the literature and open-access data, they will explore how the spatial distribution of basic services and infrastructure relates to the spatial distribution of health outcomes. Through this analysis, they will identify and discuss possible synergies between urban planning and public health that could lead to more equitable cities and communities. Therefore, this course promotes a comprehensive, interdisciplinary perspective and debate on urban spaces, having health and well-being as starting points. Teaching will be case study-driven, encouraging collaborative approaches to address complex “real world” problems through project-based teamwork activities. Indeed, the heterogenous background of students attending the program represents a valuable opportunity to promote interdisciplinary collaboration. By the end of the course, students will be equipped with critical analytical tools to engage with pressing urban health challenges and advocate for spatially just interventions in cities worldwide. Moreover, the project-based teaching format will help students build key transversal skills such as project- and time-management. |
| Learning objectives | • Technical skills: (1) Identify and explain relations between the physical and social environments and health outcomes; (2) assess context-specific urban health needs; (3) design evidence-based interventions to mitigate the burden of disease. • Transversal skills: (1) Oral communication; (2) group work; (3) project-management |
| Bibliography | Bibliography (Mandatory) Soja, E. (2009). The city and spatial justice. Justice spatiale/Spatial justice, 1(1), 1-5. Sverdlik, A. (2011). Ill-health and poverty: a literature review on health in informal settlements. Environment and urbanization, 23(1), 123-155. Tedeschi, M. (2024). Datafication and urban (in) justice: Towards a digital spatial justice. Geography Compass, 18(6), e12763. Vearey, J., Luginaah, I., Magitta, N. W. F., Shilla, D. J., & Oni, T. (2019). Urban health in Africa: a critical global public health priority. BMC public health, 19, 1-4. Vlahov, D., & Galea, S. (2002). Urbanization, urbanicity, and health. Journal of Urban Health, 79, S1-S12. Bibliography (Optional) Ezeh, A., Oyebode, O., Satterthwaite, D., Chen, Y. F., Ndugwa, R., Sartori, J., ... & Lilford, R. J. (2017). The history, geography, and sociology of slums and the health problems of people who live in slums. The lancet, 389(10068), 547-558. Grant, M., de Leeuw, E., Caiaffa, W. T., Boufford, J. I., Dora, C., & Parnell, S. (2024). The emergence of a modern paradigm for urban health. F1000Research, 13(987), 987. Pessoa Colombo, V., Chenal, J., Koné, B., Bosch, M., & Utzinger, J. (2022). Using open-access data to explore relations between urban landscapes and diarrhoeal diseases in Côte d’Ivoire. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(13), 7677. Vlahov, D., Galea, S., & Freudenberg, N. (2005). The urban health “advantage”. Journal of urban health, 82, 1-4. World Health Organization. (2020). Integrating health in urban and territorial planning: a sourcebook. World Health Organization. |
| Comments | The course is open to Master students from other programs with a priority for MA Students in Critical Urbanisms and in Changing Societies on timely registration. Maximum capacity 35. |
| Admission requirements | Anmelden: Belegen ; Abmelden: nicht erforderlich |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Thursday | 16.15-18.00 | Rosshofgasse (Schnitz), Seminarraum S 01 |
Dates
| Modules |
Module: Fields: Public Health and Social Life (Master's degree program: African Studies) Module: The Urban across Disciplines (Master's degree program: Critical Urbanisms) Specialization Module Global Europe: Global Ageing and Health (Master's Studies: European Global Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Pass/Fail |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Fachbereich Urban Studies |