Anne Hurni, University of Western Sydney

Urban development, transport and child health: the case of Western Sydney

An increasingly holistic approach to health status (WHO, 2002) recognises that place of residence must itself be broadly conceived. Poor areas report higher health problems not only because poor people live there. The significance of place attributes arises from at least two factors, both of which the proposed study aims to research:

1. differential exposure to ‘toxic' environments (pollution, noxious land uses, dense transport networks etc). For example, studies conducted in the United Kingdom, yet to be reproduced in Australia, have shown that:

  • more than a quarter of child pedestrian casualties happen in the most deprived areas; and that
  • deprived communities suffer the worst traffic pollution, with a growing body of evidence suggesting a link between road traffic and health (SEU 2003).

More study of such environmental impacts on local health profiles is warranted in the Australian context, especially in regions such as Western Sydney destined to have increasingly dense population and transport networks.

2. There are also crucial socio-cultural determinants of health, including (especially) in the case of children, access to a healthy diet, early development programs, and transport (mobility and accessibility). These are key locational attributes shaping health vulnerabilities and wellbeing across the surface of our towns and cities (WHO Social Determinants of Health, 1998). Again, there is scope to assess these links in the Australian context, especially where such spatial inequities might be expected to contribute to poor health and thus community sustainability in areas targeted for population growth.

The current proposal aims to contribute to a more rigorous and thoroughgoing understanding of the nexus between place, urban development, and measures of health status for children across selected sites in Western Sydney. Given that there are established links between respiratory disease, obesity, and road traffic injury (Haines et al 2000) to the urban development issue of transport - conceived narrowly as ‘roads' as well as broadly in terms of ‘accessibility' (Lucas, 2004) and ‘mobility' (Davis and Jones, 1996 and Gudmundsson 2005) - the primary focus will be transport, children's health, and community sustainability in Western Sydney.

The proposed research aims to build knowledge around the health effects, costs and benefits for children related to transport and urban development, and contribute evidence for promoting assessment and integration of children's needs in the planning of human settlements, transport and infrastructure.

The research will incorporate a range of both quantitative and qualitative methods including spatial analysis of demographic, socio-economic and epidemiological data and on-site observation.

- Anne Hurni, March 2006

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