Scoping review of wellbeing research in low- and middle-income countries’ secondary cities

The world is rapidly urbanising, presenting challenges for city sustainability and resident wellbeing. While many large, established cities are attempting to retrofit solutions, emerging ‘secondary’ cities have the opportunity to avoid this by forefronting resident wellbeing as they grow. However, in low- and middle-income countries in particular, weak governance and under-resourcing mean there is a real risk that mistakes of the past will be repeated. Despite this, secondary cities remain under researched. Here, we present a scoping review of the literature on resident wellbeing in low- and middle-income secondary cities. Searches and screening of the academic literature identified 88 relevant studies. These had geographic biases, with 42 coming from China, and none from low-income countries. Most assessed subjective rather than objective or physiological wellbeing, with a lack of consistency in approaches and scales used. Most studies considered ‘downstream’ drivers of wellbeing (most commonly greenspaces, transportation, housing and social inclusion) rather than ‘upstream’ governance. Dimensions of equity were also narrowly considered, with almost no attention given to intersectionality. Addressing these evidence gaps and harmonising approaches to assessing wellbeing are essential for building the understanding needed to influence the trajectory of these cities in which the majority of the world’s urban population resides.