Consideration of urban green space in impact assessments for health

Fischer, TB; Urmila, J; Fawcett, P; Clement, S; Hayes, SJ; Nowacki, J

Abstract

This paper explores how health aspects connected with the planning of urban green space are currently supported through two types of impact assessments: health impact assessment (HIA) and environmental assessment, including strategic environmental assessment (SEA) of policies, plans and programmes and environmental impact assessment (EIA) of projects. Seven HIAs and five EIAs/SEAs from the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Austria and Germany are reviewed, using an analytical framework designed on the basis of a literature review. An important finding is that whilst all HIAs follow a problem-/objectives-driven approach, designing guidelines for potential future projects, all EIAs/SEAs use an impact-driven approach, focusing on the impacts of planned and concrete action. HIAs therefore approach policy, plan, programme and project-making exercises from the outside, making suggestions to those working on them to consider certain aspects in the future, rather than working with them on improving things within a decision making process, as is usually is usually the case with EIAs/SEAs.

Citation

Fischer, T., Urmila, J., Fawcett, P., Clement, S., Hayes, S., & Nowacki, J. (2018). Consideration of urban green space in impact assessments for health. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 36(1), 32-44. https://doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2017.1364021

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 1, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Nov 6, 2017
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jul 22, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 22, 2019
• Journal: Journal of the International Association for Impact Assessment
• Print ISSN: 1461-5517
• Electronic ISSN: 1471-5465
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Volume: 36
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 32-44
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2017.1364021
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2017.1364021
• Related Public URLs: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tiap20/current