‘Hot cities’ and their experiences and planning for rapid growth: An analysis of strategic planning documents

Abstract

City living is the new normal as more than half of the world's population resides in urban areas. How has this transition affected public health and urban planning departments, and how, if at all, are they recognizing its effects in their strategic planning documents? Using publicly available strategic planning documents from public health and urban planning departments among rapidly growing U.S. cities, keyword frequency and keywords-in-context/code frequency analyses were performed to address this question. The results indicated that urban planning departments recognize their city's growth and associated effects more frequently than public health departments. Although not all cities included in the study referenced their rapid population growth in their materials, those that did commonly noted its effects on demographic transition, infrastructure planning, and service delivery. Thus, indicating rapid population growth may impact these areas pertinent to public health and urban planning. Regardless of department, the areas least connected to rapid growth in the documents were budgeting and data; two topics indicated by the literature are important tools to address the effects of rapid population growth, signifying, among other things, the need to better utilize smart city initiatives such as real-time data sharing.