James Nguyen H. Spencer – författare

By taking an ecosystem approach to emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), this book gathers the scientific evidence outlining the origins of EIDs to show how a landscape-based ecosystem approach can lead to policy alternatives that draw on the expertise of planning for future pandemic prevention and management.Global EIDs are one of the world’s fastest-growing challenges to local health and are often able to cross large distances. The book targets the substantial “unknowns” surrounding these dangerous characteristics and outlines how current debates about pandemics overlook important characteristics of both the microscopic evolution of viruses themselves, as well as the social and economic systems through which they move from localized outbreak to global pandemic. Using accessible language, it highlights how planners can help advance and shape policy directions; and how investments in technologies, people, and institutions can be beneficial. Chapters emphasize the importance of creating methods of analysis able to detail very-long-term risks, and therefore suggest actionable and affordable preventative planning today for pandemics predicted decades from now. In doing so, they detail how the intersection of two planning fields of expertise - land use planning and transportation planning – can be enlisted in the fight against future pandemic risk.Summarizing evidence from past pandemics and using case examples, this book provides future planners with innovative ideas to help the field efficiently understand core health ideas that align with planning expertise. This book is essential for graduate students in urban planning and public health courses, as well as all built environment professionals and practitioners tasked with reducing the risks of the next pandemic.

By taking an ecosystem approach to emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), this book gathers the scientific evidence outlining the origins of EIDs to show how a landscape-based ecosystem approach can lead to policy alternatives that draw on the expertise of planning for future pandemic prevention and management.Global EIDs are one of the world’s fastest-growing challenges to local health and are often able to cross large distances. The book targets the substantial “unknowns” surrounding these dangerous characteristics and outlines how current debates about pandemics overlook important characteristics of both the microscopic evolution of viruses themselves, as well as the social and economic systems through which they move from localized outbreak to global pandemic. Using accessible language, it highlights how planners can help advance and shape policy directions; and how investments in technologies, people, and institutions can be beneficial. Chapters emphasize the importance of creating methods of analysis able to detail very-long-term risks, and therefore suggest actionable and affordable preventative planning today for pandemics predicted decades from now. In doing so, they detail how the intersection of two planning fields of expertise - land use planning and transportation planning – can be enlisted in the fight against future pandemic risk.Summarizing evidence from past pandemics and using case examples, this book provides future planners with innovative ideas to help the field efficiently understand core health ideas that align with planning expertise. This book is essential for graduate students in urban planning and public health courses, as well as all built environment professionals and practitioners tasked with reducing the risks of the next pandemic.

The central premise of the book, as well as the key lesson for readers is that infrastructure is the backbone of democracy. Without it, the process of collective governance fades beyond the immediacy of daily life. Using this premise, the book describes several case studies from Southeast Asia – rapidly urbanizing communities in Gresik, Indonesia; Can Tho, Viet Nam; Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Ha Noi, Viet Nam –that illustrate the embeddedness of highly localized governance structures in the built infrastructure. These four case studies illustrating similar community phenomena across differing social, political, and cultural context will encourage readers to consider the material, built environment stakes underlying participatory democracy as well as the importance of democratic participation in the visioning, building and management of large-scale urban projects.