Urban trees are a dominant natural element in cities; they provide important ecosystem services to urban citizens and help urban areas adapt to climate change. Many rationales have been proposed to provide a purpose for urban forest management, some of which have been ineffective in addressing important ecological and social management themes. Among these rationales we find a values-based persp...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the preferences of urban dwellers for variouselements of urban parks in order to provide some important suggestions for rehabilitation of urban deficient parks. Inthis regard, this study has conducted a survey in one of the oldest parks in Khorramabad, Iran, to reveal the overallsatisfaction of the park situation and to explore the preferences of...

BACKGROUND Recent societal and political reforms in Myanmar may upturn the socio-economy and, thus, contribute to the country's health transition. Baseline data on urban-rural disparities in non-communicable disease (NCD) risk factors are not thoroughly described in this country which has been relatively closed for more than five decades. We aim to investigate urban-rural differences in mean va...

BACKGROUND Previous studies have found mixed results about cigarette and alcohol consumption patterns among rural-to-urban migrants. Moreover, there are limited longitudinal data about consumption patterns in this population. As such, this study aimed to compare the smoking and heavy drinking prevalence among rural, urban, and rural-to-urban migrants in Peru, as well as the smoking and heavy dr...

AIMS In Kenya, it is estimated that 60 to 80% of urban residents live in slum or slum-like conditions. This study investigates expenditures patterns of slum dwellers in Nairobi, their coping strategies and the determinants of those coping strategies. METHOD We use a dataset from the Indicator Development for Surveillance of Urban Emergencies (IDSUE) research study conducted in four Nairobi sl...

BACKGROUND It is generally assumed that urban slum residents have worse health status when compared with other urban populations, but better health status than their rural counterparts. This belief/assumption is often because of their physical proximity and assumed better access to health care services in urban areas. However, a few recent studies have cast doubt on this belief. Whether slum dw...

Many of us feel intuitively that having access to nature in urban environments is important for our quality of life. The evidence base supporting this claim has grown considerably in recent years, with high profile studies highlighting the links between access to greenspace/having views of nature and health and wellbeing. Physical activity in green environments is increasingly seen as a valuabl...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Oman is high and appears to be rising. Rising rates of diabetes and associated risk factors have been observed in populations undergoing epidemiological transition and urbanization. A previous study in Oman indicated that urban-dwellers were not significantly more likely to have diabetes. This study was undertaken to determine if a more accurate u...

People are able to detect up to 1 trillion odors. Yet, city planning is concerned only with a few bad odors, mainly because odors are currently captured only through complaints made by urban dwellers. To capture both good and bad odors, we resort to a methodology that has been recently proposed and relies on tagging information of geo-referenced pictures. In doing so for the cities of London an...

Exposure to air pollution in city centers is of major concern because of its health-risks to urban dwellers, trafficcorridor users and even to in-transit commuters. The steady growth in traffic is the major source of toxic air pollutants in urban centers these days. Therefore, studying exposure to air pollutants in urban centers is of special interests to environmental health scientists. This s...