Urban Environments and Health in the Philippines A Retrospective on Women Street Vendors and their Spaces Health and the Built Environment Series

Urban Environments and Health in the Philippines offers a retrospective view of women street vendors and their urban environments in Baguio City, designed by American architect and planner Daniel Burnham in the early twentieth century, and established by the American imperial government as a place for healing and well-being.

Based on a transdisciplinary multi-method study of street vendors, the author offers a unique perspective as a researcher of the place, to ultimately ask how marginalized women authenticate and democratize prime urban spaces for their livelihoods. This book provides a portal to another way of seeing and understanding streets and people, covering spatial units at multiple scales, design imperialism and its impact on health, and resilience strategies for challenging realities.

Blending subjects of architecture, planning, and health, this book is an ideal read for those interested in fields of urban planning and design, public health, landscape architecture, geography, and social sciences.

Introduction; Introduction; The Multi-Year Study of Vendors; Chapter 1 Decolonizing the Read ; A Decolonizing Process; The Case for Researcher Authenticity; Reading Asian Streets and Globalized Places in Perspective; Chapter 2 Lodging the Context in Place; Global Realities: Connection to a World System; Everyday Reading of Urban Environments; A Method in Street Reading: Introducing the Place-Node Concept; Historical Roots of the Health and Place Linkage; Chapter 3Locating Health and Place: Historical and Contemporary Case of Baguio City; Early American Imperialism in the Philippines; Origins of an American Hill Station; Daniel Burnham’s Plan for Baguio City; Factors in the Growth of Baguio City; Chapter 4 Intersecting Spatial-Environmental Perspective with Urban Health; 1. Life-Worlds of Women Vendors: A Global Scan; Transnational Discourse on Gender; Women Street Vendors in the Philippines and the Global South; Women Vendors as Place-Makers; Street Vending in Baguio City; 2. Street Spatial Environments in Downtown Baguio City; Upper Session Road; Middle Session Road; Lower Session Road Area; General Luna Road; Abanao/Harrison Area; 3. Women Vendors in a Spatial-Environmental and Health Context; Urban Place-Nodes in a Health Context; The Personal Accounts and Health Conditions of Eight Women Vendors; Chapter 5 A Retrospective: Reflections on Urban Environments, Women Vendors, and Health; Conclusion

Dr. Mary Anne Alabanza Akers is the Dean for the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland. She continues to write on the interconnections between urban environments, health, communities, and people.