PROGRESS IN URBAN HEALTH GEOGRAPHY USING COMPLEXITY THEORY

doi:10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.06.001

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HUMAN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2018, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (6) : 1-8. DOI: 10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.06.001

PROGRESS IN URBAN HEALTH GEOGRAPHY USING COMPLEXITY THEORY

HU Hong, XU Jian-gang

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Abstract

Medical geography shifted its focus from the geographical distribution of diseases to a wider concept of health in 1990s. Health geography then has gradually developed as a new branch of medical geography. The urban public health problems are complex and rooted in the complicated geographical spaces. However, the academic community has been mainly analyzing such complex multi-factor relationship for decades by using models and hypothesis from the perspective of reductionism. Since the effects of proximity to disease sources on health are nonlinear and the existence of triads of urban space results in health inequality, the reductionism has certain limitations to capture these complex nonlinear and nested relationships between multiple health indicators. Employing the complexity theory, this paper aims to understand the urban health system as a complex system with fundamental attributes such as openness, components with limited ‘knowledge’ of each other, self-organization, path dependence, emergence, positive feedback, and lock-in. It analyzes the mechanisms in urban health geography from the perspective of complexity theory and the production of space. Under the interaction of the built environment, urban administration policy, and social space, the dynamics of individual health are affected by the internal factors at city level and the external factors at regional and global level. Three types of health outcomes, disease transmission, chronic diseases and mental illnesses are finally formed. Complex theory can be used to analyze three major issues in urban health geography, urban environmental exposure and urban residents' health, urban health care and medical policies, global environmental change and urban residents' health risks. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to study urban health geography from the perspective of complexity theory. It includes three stages and two processes.

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complexity theory / urban health geography / nonlinearity / dynamics

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HU Hong, XU Jian-gang. PROGRESS IN URBAN HEALTH GEOGRAPHY USING COMPLEXITY THEORY[J]. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY. 2018, 33(6): 1-8 https://doi.org/10.13959/j.issn.1003-2398.2018.06.001

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