Human Health & Multispecies Cohabitation on an Urban Planet
Spokespersons: Sandra Jasper (FAU) & Dorothee Brantz (TU Berlin)
This exploratory project will analyze urban human-animal-environment relationships and how they affect human health in urban spaces. The project investigates the multiple links between health, biodiversity, and environmental pollution. The history of urbanization in conjunction with globalization, particularly since the industrial revolution, has repeatedly given rise to widespread contagious diseases. While pandemics have existed throughout history, their rate of occurrence has increased dramatically since the 1960s. Rapid urbanization and its effects on land use change, global mobility patterns, and environmental pollution are key interdependent forces in this process. If we want to work towards improving both human and ecosystem health, we need to pay close attention to the complexities of urban habitats and processes of urban environmental change, untangling the main drivers of urbanization and the interplay between biodiversity and human health.
Our consortium brings together an interdisciplinary team of urban scholars to work towards conceptualizing and empirically examining the complex relationship between human health, biodiversity and urban pollution through four thematic fields: (1) Global/Planetary Urban Health, (2) The Health Effects of Biophilic Cities, (3) Cities and Infectious Diseases, and (4) Urban Pollution and Multispecies Health.
We seek to advance a theory and practice of multispecies urbanism that views the environment not as a passive backdrop but as an active agent co-producing human health. Working with our transdisciplinary partners, we take on the imagination challenge of reconceptualising urban health through a multispecies lens; and, we take on the implementation challenge by developing strategies for multispecies cohabitation with the ultimate goal of building healthier and more equitable urban futures.
This project posed two interrelated research questions: What do the concepts of global and Planetary Health mean for the development of cities? And, related to that, how can we rethink the urban in relation to a more integrated human and multispecies equity when it comes to questions of health and disease?
Further information: Webpage Research Consortium.
Funded by Berlin University Alliance “Exploration Projects of the Grand Challenge Initiative on Global Health” (2023-2026), DFG Funding Line “Universities of Excellence”, 1,35M€.