Regional impact assessment of air quality improvement: The air quality lifecourse assessment tool (AQ-LAT) for the West Midlands combined authority (WMCA).

Poor air quality is the largest environmental health risk in England. In the West Midlands, UK, ∼2.9 million people are affected by air pollution with an average loss in life expectancy of up to 6 months. The 2021 Environment Act established a legal framework for local authorities in England to develop regional air quality plans, generating a policy need for predictive environmental impact assessment tools. In this context, we developed a novel Air Quality Lifecourse Assessment Tool (AQ-LAT) to estimate electoral ward-level impacts of PM2.5 and NO2 exposure on outcomes of interest to local authorities, namely morbidity (asthma, coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, lung cancer), mortality, and associated healthcare costs. We apply the Tool to assess the health economic burden of air pollutant exposure and estimate benefits that would be generated by meeting WHO 2021 Global Air Quality Guidelines (AQGs) (annual average concentrations) for NO2 (10 µg/m3) and PM2.5 (5 µg/m3) in the West Midlands Combined Authority Area. All West Midlands residents live in areas which exceed WHO AQGs, with 2070 deaths, 2070 asthma diagnoses, 770 CHD diagnoses, 170 lung cancers and 650 strokes attributable to air pollution exposure annually. Reducing PM2.5 and NO2 concentrations to WHO AQGs would save 10,700 lives reducing regional mortality by 1.8%, gaining 92,000 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and preventing 20,500 asthma, 7400 CHD, 1400 lung cancer, and 5700 stroke diagnoses, with economic benefits of £3.2 billion over 20 years. Significantly, we estimate 30% of QALY gains relate to reduced disease burden. The AQ-LAT has major potential to be replicated across local authorities in England and applied to inform regional investment decisions.

Temporary Urbanisms as Policy Alternatives to Enhance Health and Well-Being in the Post-Pandemic City.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: While there has been extensive discussion on the various forms of temporary uses in urban settings, little is known on the ways in which temporary and health urbanisms connect. Now, a turning point has been reached regarding the interactions between health and the built environment and the contributions made by urban planning and other built environment disciplines. In the context of the post-pandemic city, there is a need to develop a health-led temporary urbanism agenda than can be implemented in various settings both in the Global South and North. RECENT FINDINGS: Health-led temporary urbanism requires a reinterrogation of current models of urban development including designing multifunctional spaces in urban environments that provide sites for temporary urbanism-related activities. A healthy city is an adaptable city and one that provides opportunities for citizen-led interventions intended to enhance well-being by blending the temporary with the permanent and the planned with the improvised. Health-led temporary urbanism contributes to the call for more trans- and inter-disciplinary discussions allowing to more thoroughly link urban planning and development with health.

COVID-19 and Alternative Conceptualisations of Value and Risk in GPN Research.

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a major disturbance that has rippled across the world's population, states, economy, and central nervous system or global production networks transforming the traditional roles of states, firms, individuals/consumers, and geographies of production. This paper offers a critical and context-based approach to understanding globalization and localization by challenging the conceptualization of 'value' and 'risk' within the current global production networks framework as well as identifying key operational strategies in risk management and national security. An analysis of the adaptation strategies of the GPNs of 91 companies identifies the role played by four different forms of value in configuring production networks. This is to balance 'economic value' with non-price-based sources of value and alternative values. The analysis underscores the critical role of the state in ensuring national and human security as well as its increasing power as a key actor in GPNs and the global economy.

COVID-19, Virtual Church Services and a New Temporary Geography of Home.

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures implemented by the United Kingdom government from 23 March 2020 led to unprecedented adaptations from individuals and communities including places of worship, their clergy and congregations. This paper through a multi-disciplinary dialogue between human geography and theology explores the interrelations between place, space and the spiritual. It identifies the bricolage mechanisms that were developed rapidly by churches to shift towards providing virtual church services. This was an uncommon practice by Christian denominations in the UK. COVID-19 changed the rules requiring new practices to emerge resulting in a new form of infrasecular space to emerge. Such rapid transformations through the provision of online services and virtual embeddedness blurred the lines between sacred and secular spaces. During virtual services, the minister's home is temporally linked to the homes of congregants forming an intersacred space. Homes and spaces within homes are transformed into temporary sacred spaces.