SUPERVISOR: Thomas THALER

PROJECT ASSIGNED TO: Felix SPECHTENHAUSER

By 2050, about two-thirds of the world’s population and around 80% of Europeans are expected to live in urban areas, making cities key areas for climate impacts, environmental inequalities, and public health risks. This dissertation examines how welfare and housing regimes, segregation, and urban ecological infrastructure jointly shape environmental justice and public health.

Rapid urbanisation, land-use change, densification, and soil sealing have degraded urban ecosystems and reduced the services they provide (Kabisch et al., 2016). Cities experience urban heat islands with higher daytime temperatures and slower night-time cooling than surrounding rural areas (Di Marino et al., 2023; Seebauer et al., 2024). This stems from heat-absorbing materials, reduced vegetation and tree cover, sealed surfaces, and anthropogenic heat from traffic and industry. 

Cities increasingly turn to nature-based solutions and urban ecological infrastructure (IUCN, 2016; McPhearson et al., 2022). These elements deliver provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting ecosystem services (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) and can mitigate weather and temperature extremes. 

However, these environmental benefits are not distributed in a socially equitable manner. Environmental justice, rooted in 1970s social movements, analyses how environmental benefits and burdens are unevenly allocated across socioeconomic and ethnic groups (Nesbitt et al., 2019; Schaeffer and Tivadar, 2019; Langemeyer and Connolly, 2020). Research shows that low-income and minority neighbourhoods tend to have less access to green and blue spaces, lower tree canopy, and higher exposure to noise and air pollution (Landry and Chakraborty, 2009; Kabisch and Haase, 2014; Saporito and Casey, 2015; Ferguson et al., 2018; Jünger, 2022; Neier, 2023). These communities often face higher heat stress and lower adaptive capacity, linked to material deprivation (Chakraborty, Maantay and Brender, 2011; Mallen, Stone and Lanza, 2019; Seebauer et al., 2024). This produces segregation-based environmental inequalities (Morrill, 1991; Park and Kwan, 2017; Schaeffer and Tivadar, 2019). These spatial patterns are influenced by welfare state regimes, housing systems, and planning policies.

Against this backdrop, the dissertation weaves together environmental justice, residential segregation, and public health. Using case studies in Vienna, Warsaw, and Innsbruck, it explores how welfare systems, housing regimes, and urban greening policies generate spatially measurable patterns of environmental deprivation, segregation, and health risks such as heat stress. Across these cases, the project aims to pinpoint spatial hotspots of environmental injustice and health vulnerability and to provide evidence-based guidance for planners, politicians, and stakeholders. 

Reference list

Chakraborty, J., Maantay, J. and Brender, J. (2011) ‘Disproportionate Proximity to Environmental Health Hazards: Methods, Models, and Measurement’. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2010.300109

Di Marino, M. et al. (2023) ‘Interlinking the silos: How to stimulate a new debate on more greenery in cities’, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 87 (5pp). doi: 10.1016/j.ufug.2023.128065

Ferguson, M. et al. (2018) ‘Contrasting distributions of urban green infrastructure across social and ethno-racial groups’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 175, pp. 136–148. doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.03.020

IUCN (2016) NbS Definition. Available at:

Jünger, S. (2022) ‘Land use disadvantages in Germany: A matter of ethnic income inequalities?’ Urban Studies, 59(9), pp. 1819–1836. doi: 10.1177/00420980211023206

Kabisch, N. et al. (2016) ‘Nature-based solutions to climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban areas: perspectives on indicators, knowledge gaps, barriers, and opportunities for action’. doi: 10.5751/ES-08373-210239

Kabisch, N. and Haase, D. (2014) ‘Green justice or just green? Provision of urban green spaces in Berlin, Germany’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 122, pp. 129–139. doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2013.11.016

Landry, S.M. and Chakraborty, J. (2009) ‘Street Trees and Equity: Evaluating the Spatial Distribution of an Urban Amenity’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 41(11), pp. 2651–2670. doi: 10.1068/a41236

Langemeyer, J. and Connolly, J.J. (2020) ‘Weaving notions of justice into urban ecosystem services research and practice’, Environmental Science & Policy, 109, pp. 1–14. doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2020.03.021

Mallen, E., Stone, B. and Lanza, K. (2019) ‘A methodological assessment of extreme heat mortality modeling and heat vulnerability mapping in Dallas, Texas’, Urban Climate, 30. doi: 10.1016/j.uclim.2019.100528

McPhearson, T. et al. (2022) ‘A social-ecological-technological systems framework for urban ecosystem services’, One Earth, 5(5), pp. 505–518. doi: 10.1016/j.oneear.2022.04.007

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) ‘Ecosystems and Human Well-being: A Framework for Assessment’.

Morrill, R. (1991) ‘On The Measure of Geographic Segregation’.

Neier, T. (2023) ‘The green divide: A spatial analysis of segregation-based environmental inequality in Vienna’, Ecological Economics, 213. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.107949

Nesbitt, L. et al. (2019) ‘Who has access to urban vegetation? A spatial analysis of distributional green equity in 10 US cities’, Landscape and Urban Planning, 181, pp. 51–79. doi: 10.1016/j.landurbplan.2018.08.007

Park, Y.M. and Kwan, M.-P. (2017) ‘Multi-Contextual Segregation and Environmental Justice Research: Toward Fine-Scale Spatiotemporal Approaches’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(10). doi: 10.3390/ijerph14101205

Saporito, S. and Casey, D. (2015) ‘Are There Relationships Among Racial Segregation, Economic Isolation, and Proximity to Green Space?’.

Schaeffer, Y. and Tivadar, M. (2019) ‘Measuring Environmental Inequalities: Insights from the Residential Segregation Literature’, Ecological Economics, 164. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.05.009

Seebauer, S. et al. (2024) ‘Feeling hot is being hot? Comparing the mapping and the surveying paradigm for urban heat vulnerability in Vienna’, The Science of the Total Environment, 945. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173952