Wanted: a Transdisciplinary Knowledge Domain for Urban Health

Abstract

The current disconnection between access to increasing amounts of data about urbanization, health, and other global changes and the conflicting meanings and values of that data has created uncertainty and reduced the ability of people to act upon available information which they do not necessarily understand. We see a disconnection between increasing data availability and data processing capability and capacity. In response to this disconnection, modeling has been attributed an important role in international and national research programs in order to predict the future based on past and recent trends. Predictive models are often data heavy and founded on assumptions which are difficult to verify, especially regarding urban health issues in specific contexts. Producing large volumes of data warrants debate about what data are prerequisites for better understanding human health in changing urban environments. Another concern is how data and information can be used to apply knowledge. Making sense of empirical knowledge requires a new transdisciplinary knowledge domain created by a commitment to convergence between researchers in multiple academic disciplines and other actors and institutions in cities. Disciplinary-based researchers are no longer the sole producers of empirical knowledge. Today, diverse kinds of knowledge are becoming an emergent product of multiple societal stakeholders acting collectively to address challenges that impact on their habitat, their livelihood, and their health. Insights from complexity science also require a fundamental rethinking of the role and responsibility of human agency while admitting rather than denying complexity and radical uncertainty. CommentaryWe have great difficulty in understanding the complex consequences of how humans transformed the Earth over several millennia in order to construct their habitat and sustain their livelihood. We also have difficulty in understanding how societies have positively and negatively influenced the habitat of all living organisms on Earth. The term global change is not informative about the diversity and multiple consequences of these impacts especially on human health in specific localities, including cities around the world.

Transdisciplinary Responses to Children’s Health Challenges in the Context of Rapid Urbanization

“…Alternatives to persistent problems in cities and large metropolitan areas require interventions that cannot be wholly defined and controlled by scientific methods that produce more empirical data and information. Scientific and evidence-based knowledge about children's health is necessary but not sufficient to define priorities and make decisions about implementing policies and programs at national and local levels [20]. In essence, there are three types of empirical knowledge about health risk factors that impact children's health: First knowledge from rigorous scientific research (including systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials); second, knowledge from experiences in one or more cities or countries that have not been evaluated using scientific methods (such as case studies or interventions in specific localities); third, recognition of a lack of data and information about health hazards (in such cases the precautionary principle should be used).…”

Moving Health Upstream in Urban Development: Reflections on the Operationalization of a Transdisciplinary Case Study

“…Crossing boundaries horizontally (specialisms), vertically (tiers of decision‐making), and between worlds (academia and the real world) requires a significant change in research practice. Some have proposed more inter‐ and transdisciplinary research, as well as new methods of inquiry, funding and research impact assessment including both monetary and nonmonetary values . Interdisciplinary projects that explore this nebulous “impacts interface” are needed to navigate effective pathways to impact; this has yet to be clearly mapped .…”

“…Some have proposed more inter‐ and transdisciplinary research, as well as new methods of inquiry, funding and research impact assessment including both monetary and nonmonetary values . Interdisciplinary projects that explore this nebulous “impacts interface” are needed to navigate effective pathways to impact; this has yet to be clearly mapped . Collaboration among investigators from different disciplines and fields is challenging enough, but can be even more dramatic when a team includes both investigators and translational partners who often have divergent opinions and expectations about the goals of the translational partnership, each other's status as team members, and each group's potential contributions to the team's activities .…”

“…Arguably however, those efficiencies of scale are maximized in well‐trodden areas of activity. In the case of exploratory transdisciplinary research, there are greater gains to be made by allowing and encouraging that diversity of grouping …”

Lessons from complexity science for urban health and well-being

“…Portugali Portugali 2010Cornell et al 2013Liu 2008Anderson e al. 2013Popa et al 2015Lawrence and Gatzweiler 2017 Urban identity is created in a recursive self-referential process: people create the identities of cities with which they can identify themselves. Society shapes individuals who create society in a continuous dialectic.…”