Healthy Cities, Healthy Citizens?: Urban Wellness, Public Policy, and Self-Governance

Abstract

Rankings like the Men’s Fitness “America’s Top 10 Fittest Cities” or WalletHub’s “Healthiest & Unhealthiest Cities in America” shape how people think about cities. Forming a city’s identity around health and the pursuit of health impacts local policy and the everyday practices of urban wellness. This paper combines work in critical geographies of fatness and critical urban geography to understand how state and local governments in the United States encourage self-governance of the body through policies of urban wellness. I examine how places identify themselves as “healthy cities” and the implications of such identification for its citizens. First, I consider the definition of “healthy cities” to understand how critical urban geographers define and trouble the notion of healthy places. Second, I analyze the role of local policies, including anti-fat health campaigns, in producing “healthy cities.” Third, I examine how such policies encourage self-governance of individual citizens, including individual practices of dieting and weight loss. This paper offers insights into the role of urban place-making, the reproduction of “healthy” practices, and the influence of policy on the everyday lives of city dwellers.