Paper short abstract:

This paper is developed from ethnographic engagement with urban planning in the Oslo City Government, where public health policy is marked by stability/instability and as pressing/not-yet-pressing. It asks how municipal politics animates temporal and spatial orientations of a city’s health.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the deadly implications of contemporary urban life in Oslo. Politicians and residents alike mapped past decisions, policies, and plans onto the unequal distribution of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in the city. A story of deeply rooted social inequality was weaved into a narrative of pandemic health inequity. Today, policy failures before and during the pandemic are discussed as the backdrop of contemporary urban inequalities and the foreground for future pandemic governance. In this crisis interim, the Oslo City Government crafts a public health strategy bridging an inequitable policy history to an equitable, healthy city future.

As Oslo municipality’s civil servants develop and implement the public health strategy, they negotiate the geographical and temporal span of the city's health disparities. Some describe social inequality in health as a pressing issue of today while others consider it to be a not-yet but potential pressing issue of tomorrow. The city government launches a public health strategy to reduce social inequality in health, yet its implementation is paused while the government focuses on more immediate worries. Funding for prevention and public health expertise is described as vital for sustainable welfare futures, yet it is not prioritized until budgets “stabilize”. What is it about the dynamics of local politics that crafts public health as, all at once, a missing past, an inconvenient present and an imminent future?