A healthy and salubrious place : public health and city form

Abstract

As cities grew larger and more complex at the end of the eighteenth century, they suffered new and more pressing public health problems. The responses to these problems had, in time, an effect on the environment that produced them. This thesis is an examination of the relationship between public health reforms and the urban environment. Public health reforms were stimulated by the perceived deterioration of health in the city. The nature of public health responses designed to cope with this problem was determined, in part, by medical theory, social reform movements, and the physical environment. This thesis examines the nature of these relationships, and their effect on the form of cities in America from the colonial period to the first decades of this century. Chapter one is an explanation of general problems created by the growth of cities and the consequent attempts to formulate a theory of city form. It is a general discussion of where public health ideas belong in this complex process. The subsequent chapters examine the influence of public health theory and practice on the urban environment in three different time periods. The last chapter shows how another change in public health theory resulted in the uncoupling of broad-based health concerns from urban designs, a characteristic of the twentieth century until recent years.