The global wildland-urban interface

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is where buildings and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle1,2. It is where human-environmental conflicts and risks can be concentrated, including the loss of houses and lives to wildfire, habitat loss and fragmentation and the spread of zoonotic diseases3. However, a global analysis of the WUI has been lacking. Here, we present a global map of the 2020 WUI at 10 m resolution using a globally consistent and validated approach based on remote sensing-derived datasets of building area4 and wildland vegetation5. We show that the WUI is a global phenomenon, identify many previously undocumented WUI hotspots and highlight the wide range of population density, land cover types and biomass levels in different parts of the global WUI. The WUI covers only 4.7% of the land surface but is home to nearly half its population (3.5 billion). The WUI is especially widespread in Europe (15% of the land area) and the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome (18%). Of all people living near 2003-2020 wildfires (0.4 billion), two thirds have their home in the WUI, most of them in Africa (150 million). Given that wildfire activity is predicted to increase because of climate change in many regions6, there is a need to understand housing growth and vegetation patterns as drivers of WUI change.

Predicting the rental value of houses in household surveys in Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi: Evaluations of hedonic pricing and machine learning approaches

Housing value is a major component of the aggregate expenditure used in the analyses of welfare status of households in the development economics literature. Therefore, an accurate estimation of housing services is important to obtain the value of housing in household surveys. Data show that a significant proportion of households in a typical Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS), adopted by the Word Bank and others, are self-owned. The standard approach to predict the housing value for such surveys is based on the rental cost of the house. A hedonic pricing applying an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method is normally used to predict rental values. The literature shows that Machine Learning (ML) methods, shown to uncover generalizable patterns based on a given data, have better predictive power over OLS applied in other valuation exercises. We examined whether or not a class of ML methods (e.g. Ridge, LASSO, Tree, Bagging, Random Forest, and Boosting) provided superior prediction of rental value of housing over OLS methods accounting for spatial autocorrelations using household level survey data from Uganda, Tanzania, and Malawi, across multiple years. Our results showed that the Machine Learning methods (Boosting, Bagging, Forest, Ridge and LASSO) are the best models in predicting house values using out-of-sample data set for all the countries and all the years. On the other hand, Tree regression underperformed relative to the various OLS models, over the same data sets. With the availability of abundant data and better computing power, ML methods provide viable alternative to predicting housing values in household surveys.

Global Statement on Air Pollution and Health: Opportunities for Africa

The editorial speaks to the Global Statement on Air Pollution and Health and How it may assist African countries to eliminate air pollution-related health impacts.

Housing for People with an Acquired Brain or Spinal Injury: Mapping the Australian Funding Landscape

This research aimed to synthesize housing supports funded by 20 major insurance-based schemes for Australians with an acquired brain injury (ABI) or spinal cord injury (SCI). Publicly available grey literature (i.e., primary information from respective scheme websites) was systematically reviewed and compared. There were notable differences between the different scheme types (disability vs. workers compensation schemes) and across different States. Collectively, scheme funding was more likely to be focused on housing infrastructure and service delivery, than on tenancy support. Australians who are least likely to benefit from the current funding context are those whose home cannot be reasonably modified, are wanting to build or purchase a new home, do not have suitable, alternative short- or long-term housing options if their current home is not feasible, require support to maintain occupancy of their home or financial assistance to move into a new home, may benefit from case management services, family supports, and assistance animals, and/or cannot afford their rent or home loan repayments. Several interactions, inconsistencies, contradictions, and gaps that warrant further attention were also revealed. This review has highlighted the need for policy makers to provide transparent information about housing entitlements for individuals with ABI or SCI, and their families. A unified, evidence-based framework to guide the funding of housing and housing support services may increase the consistency of interventions available to people with ABI or SCI and, therefore, improve outcomes.

Mapping changes in housing in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2015

Access to adequate housing is a fundamental human right, essential to human security, nutrition and health, and a core objective of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals1,2. Globally, the housing need is most acute in Africa, where the population will more than double by 2050. However, existing data on housing quality across Africa are limited primarily to urban areas and are mostly recorded at the national level. Here we quantify changes in housing in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2015 by combining national survey data within a geostatistical framework. We show a marked transformation of housing in urban and rural sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2015, with the prevalence of improved housing (with improved water and sanitation, sufficient living area and durable construction) doubling from 11% (95% confidence interval, 10-12%) to 23% (21-25%). However, 53 (50-57) million urban Africans (47% (44-50%) of the urban population analysed) were living in unimproved housing in 2015. We provide high-resolution, standardized estimates of housing conditions across sub-Saharan Africa. Our maps provide a baseline for measuring change and a mechanism to guide interventions during the era of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Postforced eviction communities: The contribution of personal and environmental resources to the sense of belonging to the community

This article aims to examine the contribution of personal and environmental resources to the sense of belonging to the community among postforced eviction communities. The study included 140 participants who experienced forced eviction, and ranged in age from 20 to 79 years. Slightly more than half were women (52.4%, 74). Nearly half of the participants continued living alongside their fellow community members, while others left for different communities. The participants filled out self-report questionnaires assessing their sense of belonging, social and family support, sense of mastery, and self-esteem. We used 2 complementary instruments: the stepwise regression and the mediation model. Results indicated that the level of social and family support was found to be higher in the unified communities. Lower levels of the sense of belonging were found in the split communities. The sense of mastery was found to positively contribute to the sense of belonging. The self-esteem resource was not found to contribute to the sense of belonging, whereas social and family support was found to positively contribute to the sense of belonging. The mediation model presented an interesting finding insofar that an indirect positive association was found regarding the sense of belonging via social support within different types of communities. The discussion refers to the findings and their contribution to both theory and practice.

Surviving the housing crisis: Social violence and the production of evictions among women who use drugs in Vancouver, Canada

Single room accommodation (SRA) housing is among the only forms of accessible housing to marginalized women who use illicit drugs in many urban settings. However, SRA housing environments may create specific health and drug risks for women. Little research has examined the gendered mechanisms contributing to housing vulnerability for women who use drugs and the subsequent ways they aim to mitigate harm. This study examines the gendered vulnerabilities to, and harms stemming from, evictions from SRAs in Vancouver, Canada. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 56 people who use drugs who were recently evicted (past 60 days) from SRAs in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, 19 of whom identified as women which informed this analysis. Participants were recruited by Peer Researcher Assistants for baseline and follow-up interviews three to six months later. Interview transcripts were analyzed thematically and interpreted by drawing on concepts of social violence. Findings underscore how gendered violence and forms of social control operationalized within SRAs normalized violence against women and restricted their agency. Surveillance mechanisms increased women's experiences of violence as they sought to evade such interventions. Post-eviction, women faced pronounced vulnerability to harm which reinforced their social and spatial marginality within a drug scene. Collectively, women's experiences within SRAs highlight how the hybrid forms of disciplinary mechanisms used within these housing environments significantly impacted women's experiences of harm. Greater attention to the impacts of housing and building policies on women who use drugs is needed to better address the morbidity and mortality of this population.

Unmet healthcare needs in homeless women with children in the Greater Paris area in France

BACKGROUND

Despite their poor health status, homeless women encounter many barriers to care. The objectives of our study were to estimate the prevalence of unmet healthcare needs in homeless women and to analyse associated relationships with the following factors: financial and spatial access to care, housing history, migration status, healthcare utilisation, victimization history, caring for children, social network and self-perceived health status.

METHODS

We used data from 656 homeless women interviewed during the ENFAMS representative survey of sheltered homeless families, conducted in the Paris region in 2013. Structural equation models (SEM) were used to estimate the impact of various factors on homeless women's unmet healthcare needs.

RESULTS

Among those interviewed, 25.1% (95%CI[21.3-29.0]) had at least one unmet healthcare need over the previous year. Most had given up on visiting general practitioners and medical specialists. No association with factors related to financial access or to health insurance status was found. However, food insecurity, poor spatial health access and poor self-perceived health were associated with unmet healthcare needs. Self-perceived health appeared to be affected by victimization and depression.

DISCUSSION

The lower prevalence of unmet healthcare needs in homeless women compared with women in stable housing situations suggests that homeless women have lower needs perceptions and/or lower expectations of the healthcare system. This hypothesis is supported by the results from SEM. Strategies to provide better access to care for this population should not only focus on financial interventions but also more broadly on spatial healthcare access, cultural norms, and perceptions of health. Reducing their unmet needs and improving their access to healthcare and prevention must include an improvement in their living, financial and housing conditions.

[Utilization effect of floor plan sketches in hypothetical cases assuming a community care meeting]

Objective　Floor plan sketches (FPSs) are schematic representations of floors in a home. FPSs display information gathered from observations and interviews on people's way of dwelling. To elucidate the effects of utilizing FPSs in case reviews assuming a community care meeting attended by multidisciplinary professionals, we conducted reviews of hypothetical cases created for experimental purposes.Methods　Two hypothetical cases (Cases 1 and 2) were developed, and each case was reviewed with and without FPSs. Two groups (Groups A and B) were created, each consisting of five health care and welfare professionals involved in actual case reviews. Group A reviewed Case 1 without FPSs followed by Case 2 with FPSs, while Group B reviewed Case 2 without FPSs followed by Case 1 with FPSs. Case conferences and group interviews conducted after the completion of these reviews. Based on the verbatim transcripts of the reviews and interviews, we investigated differences between case reviews with and without FPSs with regard to the time required for the review and the number and contents of participants' comments.Results　Review content could largely be divided into two categories: (1) the living conditions and support for the case subjects and their families, and (2) their homes and their way of dwelling at home. These categories were common to case reviews both with and without FPSs. In discussions about the homes and ways of dwelling, however, confirmation of the locations of rooms consumed a large amount of time in case reviews without FPSs. In case reviews with FPSs, discussions were more specific and included details such as room usage and paths by which residents move. The mean time required for a review was 41 minutes per case (range: 36 to 44 minutes), which did not greatly differ based on whether or not FPSs were used. Participants made more comments and seemed to interact more actively with each other when they had the FPSs than when they did not. The impressions of participants were that FPSs allowed the visualization of the case subjects and their families in their homes and fostered a greater feeling of familiarity with the case.Conclusion　The use of FPSs in case reviews reduces the time spent on information sharing and allows more detailed review contents. Furthermore, FPSs enhance the ability to imagine the daily lives of case subjects and their families, thereby potentially broadening assessments in case reviews.

The park-view effect: Residential development is higher at the boundaries of protected areas

Land-use changes in the surrounding of protected areas might compromise their conservation efficacy, and thus the potential attractive effect that protected areas may exert on urban development is particularly concerning. We investigated whether the proximity to protected areas in a region (Lombardy, Italy) with a high density of urban areas and parks may increase the likelihood of residential development. The main change around protected areas was the loss of open areas (mostly due to development processes at the expense of arable land), which was higher in proximity of parks. Changes in residential discontinuous development were significantly and negatively related to proximity to parks, whereas changes in productive developments were unrelated to park proximity. The higher likelihood of residential development in proximity to parks is likely due to the attraction exerted by parks. The severe loss of open areas and increase of residential development around parks heavily impacted on habitat availability for a declining bird species (Alauda arvensis). Conservation policies considering also what happens around protected areas are urgently needed.

Neighbourhood demolition, relocation and health. A qualitative longitudinal study of housing-led urban regeneration in Glasgow, UK

We conducted a qualitative longitudinal study to explore how adult residents of disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods (Glasgow, UK) experienced neighbourhood demolition and relocation. Data from 23 households was collected in 2011 and 2012. Some participants described moves to new or improved homes in different neighbourhoods as beneficial to their and their families’ wellbeing. Others suggested that longstanding illnesses and problems with the new home and/or neighbourhood led to more negative experiences. Individual-level contextual differences, home and neighbourhood-level factors and variations in intervention implementation influence the experiences of residents involved in relocation programmes.

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Housing-led urban regeneration can improve social determinants of health but can also be socially disruptive.

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We found qualitative evidence of complex experiences during regeneration involving neighbourhood demolition and relocation.

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Individual, household, home and neighbourhood characteristics influence residents’ positive and negative experiences.

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Longstanding illness was a particular barrier to residents benefiting from improved residential environments.