Two decades under the influence of urbanization and infectious disease

This article outlines the major aspects of Roger Keil's contributions to the study of the relationship between cities and infectious disease to date. We suggest how urban scholars have already and could in the future build on his corpus of work, not just for urban health specifically, but for our grasp of extended urbanization more generally. We do so by recounting Keil's contribution to the urban studies scholarship on various dimensions, including those pertaining to: the networking of urban health, managing urban health within the context of extended urbanization, and finally theoretically grounding urban health into a finer-grained critical grasp of urban questions in our post-anthropocentric era. In our conclusion, we highlight the urgent and continuing need to embrace Roger Keil's steadfast optimism even when facing deeply troubling urban crises—a lesson all too critical today as global affairs veer toward more turbulent and calamitous times, such as those faced in the current geopolitical situation.