Urban Green Infrastructure and Human Health : A Scoping Review of Evidence and Implication for Planners

This scoping review examines the current state of the evidence linking specific types of green infrastructure to human health outcomes. The literature indicates broadly that green infrastructure provides services or co-benefits that affect health outcomes. However, the state of the evidence is such that there is no unifying or dominant conceptual framework representing the relationship between green infrastructure and health. The hypothetical linkages between the two are many and the supporting evidence is scarce. This is further confirmed by a near-absence of studies on the linkages between green infrastructure and women’s health, as well as other sub-categories of human health. This review advances a definition of green infrastructure that is more nuanced and based on specific criteria than what is available in published literature, consolidates and refines existing main typologies of green infrastructure, and demonstrates a simple qualitative methodology for scoping out conceptual linkages between GI and human health based on a literature review