Urban health as a diagnostic lens for sustainability

Exposing policy myopia through Himalayan urbanisation

Abstract

Contemporary sustainability discussions revolve around the notions of resilience, liveability, social cohesion and green infrastructure. However, the integration of urban health within the policy planning remains explicitly limited. The research argues that urban health is often treated as secondary concern rather than an intrinsic indicator of socio-ecological well-being. Such treatment reflects a deeper limitation within the existing sustainability frameworks. These frameworks remain largely anthropocentric, growth oriented and insufficiently grounded in ecological and public health realities particularly in a fragile mountain ecosystem. Shimla, a major Himalayan city and deemed to be Smart City, is examined through spatio-temporal patterns of urban expansion with supervised classification of multi-decadal Landsat imagery. The analysis indicates a structural misalignment between urban growth trajectories and conditions required for socio-ecological well-being. Rather than interpreting these spatial changes as isolated planning failures, the findings are placed within a multi-level analysis of sustainability frameworks. These findings assess the nature and extent of urban health considerations being conceived, operationalised and monitored. The study stresses at the clear lack of understanding of regional, topographical realities while translating policy planning aimed at urban health. This policy myopia not only undermines the stated objectives of sustainable urbanism but also results in health vulnerabilities. The research advances urban health as a critical diagnostic lens through which the adequacy of sustainability frameworks can be evaluated, particularly in ecologically sensitive regions such as the Himalayas. The research finds that sustainability approaches which fail to stress on urban health inadvertently normalise socio-ecological degradation, thereby eroding the very conditions they seek to protect. The study concludes by outlining a health-centred, context-responsive planning outlook that repositions urban health as an organising principle for sustainable urbanism, rather than an auxiliary policy objective.