Historical Relationship Between Landscape Architecture and Public Health: Based on the Perspective of Responses to Infectious Diseases

Landscape architecture has played an important role in improving human settlements and public health. Existing research and practice focus on the responses to chronic non-communicable diseases, and pay less attention to infectious diseases. This paper systematically reviews the history of landscape architecture in preventing infectious diseases and introduces the miasma theory, a medical theory on which landscape architecture depends in preventing infectious diseases. It summarizes landscape architecture’s responses based on the miasma theory to infectious diseases in many countries. Among them, Britain is characterized by its development from urban park construction to the Garden City Movement, while the characteristics of America evolved from New York Central Park to City Beautiful Movement. The miasma theory also has a significant impact on landscape architecture and urban construction in France, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Germany and other countries. Finally, this paper puts forward four enlightenments of modern landscape architecture’s responses to infectious diseases.