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Abstract
The development of knowledge and policy for improving health through urban planning involves multiple disciplines and sectors. Achieving effective policymaking and knowledge production requires transdisciplinary collaboration, which necessitates a willingness among participants to collaborate in areas outside their respective fields. To establish such collaborations, it is crucial to identify and acknowledge the ontological perspectives of the actors involved. This thesis aims to identify and articulate diverse ontological perspectives on urban health and their implications for advancing transdisciplinary approaches to urban health.
The concept of paradigms is applied to identify four urban health paradigms: the ‘medical-industrial city,’ ‘urban health science,’ ‘healthy built environment,’ and ‘health social movement’ paradigms. A meta-narrative review, guided by a bibliometric co-citation network analysis, identifies five urban health research traditions: sustainable urban development, urban ecosystem services, urban resilience, healthy urban planning, and urban green spaces.
The four urban health paradigms and five urban health research traditions are employed to analyse the presentation of urban health policy ideas in the planning of the Western Parkland City in Greater Sydney, Australia. The analysis reveals that the key urban health policy ideas are grounded in different sets of urban health paradigms and are involved with different types of urban health research traditions. This finding highlights the need for transdisciplinary approaches to policymaking and indicates that effective urban health policy solutions require collaboration among actors with diverse perspectives.
In conclusion, this thesis emphasises the importance of recognising and reflecting on diverse ontological perspectives on urban health to produce and interpret transdisciplinary knowledge for the goal of improving health by transforming urban systems. Scholars, practitioners, and policymakers must seek coherence by understanding the similarities and differences in their approaches to urban health to create an opportunity for coherence in understanding knowledge generated from different paradigms.
