At which Stage Can Centralized and Decentralized Cities Meet to Create a Design that is Essential in Maintaining a Healthy Mind and Body? Report (Assessment)

This is a content analysis paper on the literature review titled City Form and Structure and its Impact in our Lives. The research question designed for this literature review is: At which stage can centralized and decentralized cities meet to create a design that is essential in maintaining a healthy mind and body?

This content analysis is based on the centrist and decentrist methodology which are the common methods that are used in the debate of planning and constructing cities in this modern age (Western Australian Planning Commission 1997).

City planning has a huge impact on the kind of life that its residents live and has a bearing on what causes unsustainable environmental stress, to what extent the city is socially stratified and functionally sub-optimal and how expensive such a city is difficult or easy to run (Western Australian Planning Commission 1997).

Some of the methodological issues of concern included issues to do with the credibility of the research design used for the study. Proper methods of research are ones that given room for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data obtained. For this research, the research methodology used for this paper is one that addresses these issues indicated above.

The effects on peoples’ lives as regards the planning of a city’s design is governed by many things most of which have to do with the policies that are considered by city developers and designers.

This means therefore that the life of city residents is determined to a large extent by the policies that are operational within the jurisdiction of the developers working on it (Schwanen 2004). In the literature review, the paper explains the accompanying diagram and examines the core and subsidiary themes concerning city form and structure.

The core themes are related to overall design of the city and whether it is geared towards sustainability (Santana, Santos and Nogueira 2009). The subsidiary themes of this paper concern the health issues linked to urban sprawl and the layout of the city.

These are important themes that must guide city planners not only in thinking about sustainability and energy efficiency but also the overall human impact of city form and structure (Santana, Santos and Nogueira 2009).

The government policy documents that have been inferred to throughout the literature review from which this content analysis paper has been written have been the health policy, state planning policy and local planning strategy policy documents. In these government policy documents, there are different concepts that have been discussed and are the ones that have been used to discuss the issues in city planning initiatives which affect city residents’ lifestyles in a social, economic and political sense.

The items discussed under the said government policy documents include the following: Land and space, transportation and health. The item of land and space seeks to preserve agricultural land where the impact of decentrist planning strategy is the creation of urban sprawl; transportation subsidiary theme seeks to provide alternative measures of decongestion and efficient public transport; and health subsidiary item in urban city planning considers health issues some of which are measures that are recommended for dealing with cases of obesity like recommending cycling and walking for obese patients (Santana, Santos and Nogueira 2009).

In a word, in the discussion of City Form and Structure there are at least two major themes which inform the idea of developing and designing cities of the 21^st century. The debate rotates about centrist and decentrist models of creating a sustainable city.

The centrists believe in sustainability and efficiency while the decentrists believe in the effective use of land and the ability to live comfortably away from the pollution and decongestion of the cities. Given that the two schools of thought have strengths and weaknesses, a compromise of the two themes is preferred to design a more elaborate theme that maximizes on its benefits and minimizes on its weaknesses.

By this the realized design uses the best of both worlds in creating future cities that does not only consider land, space, and travel but also the health benefits of being able to increase physical activity while at the same time increasing social capital and human interaction that is essential in maintaining a healthy mind and body (Western Australian Planning Commission 1997). (See appendix for a table showing the relationship between the findings drawn from the literature review and the storylines created for the framework).

Reference List

Santana, Paula, Rita, Santos and Helena Nogueira. 2009. The link between local environment and obesity: A multilevel analysis in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, Portugal. Social Science & Medicine 68, no. 3: 601-609.

Schwanen, Thomas. 2004. Policies for Urban Form and their Impact on Travel: The Netherlands Experience. Urban Studies 41, no. 4: 579-603.

Western Australian Planning Commission. 1997. State Planning Strategy Final Report. Perth, Western Australia.

Appendix

Table showing the relationship between the findings drawn from the literature review and the storylines created for the framework.