Healthy Cities 2019: Urbanisation, Infrastructures and Everyday Life

Countries undergoing rapid urban transformations experience shifts in various infrastructural systems.  However, there are explicit tensions between the apparent need to develop national infrastructures and the possible implications that this may carry for human health, social relations and environmental sustainability. For instance, unequal access to urban infrastructure – from sanitation to communication – can lead to stratified health outcomes. Differing everyday practices associated with competing coexisting infrastructures can result in exclusion and isolation of already marginalised groups. Resource-intensive and polluting modern infrastructures can trigger the degradation and loss of ecosystems and their services.  

This conference was concerned with: 

• the design, planning, implementation, maintenance and use of urban infrastructures (including, but not limited to, sanitation, transportation, health care and education);  
• the social meanings underpinning infrastructural systems and their processes;  
• the wider environmental effects of urban infrastructures; and  the human well-being outcomes of urban infrastructural transitions (public health in particular).  

The conference explored research, policy and praxis on all aspects of infrastructures, their development and outcomes, including – but not limited to – the following:  

• Urban infrastructures and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): e.g., water, sanitation, waste, or related systems across varying spatial scales  
• Uses and experiences: everyday practices, individual and group experiences, well-being outcomes 
• Design and planning: circulating knowledges, policy mobilities, development paradigms, cultural bias, global/local relationships, politics and power Implementation and maintenance: finance, resources, models 
• Transdisciplinarity: conceptual frameworks, research design and methodologies 
• Perspectives on urban socio-technical relations which exceed, or bring together, individual infrastructural sectors and systems (transportation, water, etc.) 
• East Asian and comparative case studies: historic and contemporary accounts  Activist and community praxis, including decolonising approaches to infrastructural development, urban change, and resource/waste management  
• Education and dissemination: strategies, tactics and lessons learned 

Conference Convenors

Dr Deljana IOSSIFOVA, Manchester School of Architecture/Confucius Institute/Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester 

Dr Alison BROWNE, Sustainable Consumption Institute/Geography/Manchester Urban Institute, University of Manchester

ECR Committee 

Ms Cecilia ALDA VIDAL, Sustainable Consumption Institute/Geography, University of Manchester

Mr Hongru (Franz) HONG, Gasparatos Lab, University of Tokyo 

Ms Demetra KOURRI, Architecture, University of Manchester

Coordination

Ms Tabea HECKRODT, Confucius Institute, University of Manchester 

Mr Kai XIAO, Dean of Office of Confucius Institute Affairs, Beijing Normal University

Scientific Advisory Board

Dr Daphne GONDHALEKAR, Urban Water Systems Engineering, Technical University Munich

Prof Zhenzhong HUANG, School of Law, Beijing Normal University 

Dr Sarah JEWITT, Geography, University of Nottingham 

Dr Jieyu LIU, SOAS China Institute, SOAS 

Dr Anna PLYUSHTEVA, Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research, Vrije Universiteit Brussel    

Dr Choon-Piew POW, Geography, National University of Singapore   

Dr Tatjana SCHNEIDER, Architecture, Technical University Braunschweig  

Mr Ulysses SENGUPTA, Complexity Planning and Urbanism, Manchester School of Architecture 

Prof Jianwen WEI, China Academy of Social Management, Beijing Normal University 

Prof Stefan WHITE, Place-Health Architecture Space Environment, Manchester School of Architecture

Prof Xiulan ZHANG, School of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University