Cities, Climate Change, and Public Health

As cities in the U.S. and around the world are increasingly experiencing the impacts of climate change, many are starting to include climate considerations in their planning and policymaking processes. Cities are not only looking to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, industries, and transportation to prevent future climate change but are also looking to prepare for and manage climatic changes that have already been set in motion. Urban climate adaptation to date has mostly focused on how cities can protect their physical assets from potential climate-related disasters, with an increasing emphasis on enhancing resilience, or creating places that can absorb and withstand climatic shocks. Scholars and practitioners have critiqued climate adaptation’s current emphasis on building physical resilience to climate change, pointing out that adaptation plans rarely incorporate equity or social vulnerability. Consequently, calls have emerged for climate adaptation to focus on human vulnerabilities instead. To that end, this book is about why and how the health impacts of climate change should be given a more prominent role in climate adaptation efforts at the local level. While the lack of attention to climate-related health risks in adaptation plans and policies have been pointed out by many, this has not yet led to climate adaptation planning and policymaking processes that situate citizens’ health and well-being front and center. Therefore, cities will need new approaches to enhance awareness of and facilitate prioritization of climate risk management choices that will build human resilience to climate change.