Developing a Health-Spatial Indicator System for a Healthy City in Small and Midsized Cities

Jiemei Luo, Edwin H. W. Chan, Jinfeng Du, Linxia Feng, Peng Jiang and Ying Xu
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Jiemei Luo: Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong 999077, China
Edwin H. W. Chan: Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong 999077, China
Jinfeng Du: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiao Tong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Linxia Feng: School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi’an Jiao Tong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Peng Jiang: China Center for Urban and Small Town Development, Beijing 100045, China
Ying Xu: Department of Public Administration, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 6, 1-20

Abstract: A recent examination of the significant role of public health has prompted calls to re-investigate how the urban environment affects public health. A vital part of the solution includes Healthy City initiatives that have been the subject of extensive policies, implications, and practices globally. However, the existing literature mainly focuses on big cities and metropolitan areas, while investigations into small and midsized cities (SMCs) are lacking, and thus reflect the underlying issues of health inequity. This study develops an indicator system for evaluating Healthy City initiatives in SMCs, linking urban design and public health, supported by the analyzed opinions from experts collected using both questionnaires and interviews. The indicator system includes six primary dimensions and 37 variables: urban form and transportation (UFT); health-friendly service (HFS); environmental quality and governance (EQG); community and facility (CF); green and open space (GOS); and ecological construction and biodiversity (ECB). A fuzzy synthetic evaluation technique was used to assess the relative importance of factors, emphasizing the importance of UFT, HFS, and EQG, with importance indexes of 0.175, 0.174, and 0.174, respectively. This indicator system is helpful for SMCs seeking to construct a Healthy City in the future, and is based on urban design and governance inputs and for enhancing the Healthy City knowledge base of cities of varied scales.

Keywords: Healthy City; built environment; urban design; small and midsized city; indicator system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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