Developing and testing an environmental economics approach to the valuation and application of urban health externalities

Abstract

BackgroundPoor quality urban environments have substantial impacts on public and planetary health. These costs to society are not readily quantifiable and remain largely external to mainstream measures of progress. Methods for accounting for these externalities exist, but their effective application is in development. Yet there is an increasing urgency and demand given the profound threats to quality of life both now and in the future.MethodsWe combine data from a series of systematic reviews of the quantitative evidence linking characteristics of the urban environment with health consequences and the economic valuation of these health impacts from a societal perspective within a spreadsheet-based tool. The tool–named HAUS–allows the user to estimate the health impacts of changes in urban environments. The economic valuation of these impacts in turn facilitates the use of such data in broader economic appraisal of urban development projects and policies.FindingsUsing the Impact-Pathway approach, observations of a variety of health impacts associated with 28 characteristics of the urban environment are applied to forecast changes in cases of specific health impacts that result from changes in urban contexts. Unit values for the societal cost of 78 health outcomes are estimated and incorporated in the HAUS model in order to allow the quantification of the potential effect size of a given change in the urban environment. Headline results are presented for a real-world application in which urban development scenarios that have varying quantities of green space are evaluated. The potential uses of the tool are validated via formal semi-structured interviews with 15 senior decision-makers from the public and private sectors.InterpretationResponses suggest that there is significant demand for this kind of evidence, that it is valued despite the inherent uncertainties, and has a very wide range of potential applications. Analysis of the results suggest expert interpretation and contextual understanding is critical for the value of evidence to be realized. More development and testing is needed to understand how and where it may be possible to apply effectively in real world practice.

Testing Food Waste Reduction Targets: Integrating Transition Scenarios with Macro-Valuation in an Urban Living Lab

“…Calls for alternative means of valuation that account for ecological public health or planetary health are not new [63,64], and over the last decade, the calls have been increasing substantially [65][66][67][68][69]. Yet assigning value to these "intangibles" and, more specifically, linking those valuations to critical decision-making, is not straightforward [11,12,35]. There are many parts of the decision-making "system and systems" that need recalibrating in order to better understand and promote urban health and the sustained functioning of socioecological systems [70][71][72].…”

“…The method employed is not intended to be a traditional cost-benefit analysis. We are interested instead in developing new approaches to valuation across complex systems, and understanding whether or not we can acquire a credible sense of scale of socioenvironmental impact in different areas [11,12,24,35].…”

Shaping the Future of Environmental Economics: A Bibliometric Review of Current Trends and Future Directions

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