Spatial Social Polarization and Cardiometabolic Disease Prevalence and Incidence: What Is the Role of the Neighborhood Environment?

This study examines the spatial polarization of income and racial-ethnic groups as predictors of prevalent and incident cardiometabolic disease and tests the extent to which local environmental features act as mediators. Spatial income and racial polarization are defined using the Index of Concentration at the Extremes. Using two waves of data from the Midlife in the United States study, generalized Poisson regression model results indicate that county- and tract-level income polarization are independently associated with prevalence and incidence of cardiometabolic disease.

Neighborhood intergenerational mobility and population health inequality: Spatial dependency and heterogeneity.

Health inequity represents a significant social injustice with major policy implications. This study examines the role of neighborhood intergenerational mobility (IM)-defined as the extent to which children within a specific neighborhood can achieve better socioeconomic outcomes than their parents-in shaping population health, addressing widening health inequalities. We propose that neighborhood IM is positively associated with population health, moderated by spatial dependency and heterogeneity.

Economic inequality, intergenerational mobility, and life expectancy.

This study explores the mediating role of intergenerational mobility (IM) in the relationship between economic inequality and population health in the United States, focusing on life expectancy. Using multilevel structural equation modeling across state and commuting zone (CZ) levels for both genders, we find that economic inequality indices, except for the top 1 percent's income share, adversely affect life expectancy through absolute and relative mobility. Specifically, economic inequality reduces life expectancy more significantly through absolute mobility, especially among males and lower-income groups, with nuanced impacts observed across different geographic levels.

Built Environment, Natural Environment, and Mental Health.

Mental health disorders have become a global problem, garnering considerable attention. However, the root causes of deteriorating mental health remain poorly understood, with existing literature predominantly concentrating on socioeconomic conditions and psychological factors. This study uses multi-linear and geographically weighted regressions (GWR) to examine the associations between built and natural environmental attributes and the prevalence of depression in US counties.

COVID-19, Cities and Inequality.

COVID-19 has changed our lives and will likely leave a lasting imprint on our cities. This paper reviews how the pandemic has altered the way people commute, work, collaborate, and consume, especially its reflection on urban space and spatial inequality. We conceptualize these urban changes as structural transformation, accelerated transition, and temporal change.

Green infrastructure inequality in the context of COVID-19: Taking parks and trails as examples.

Inequality in access to urban green infrastructures has been a major concern among scholars and governments, especially since the COVID-19 outbreak. There is a lack of knowledge on how people respond to the pandemic regarding the usage of green infrastructure in cities. This paper explores the shifts in visitation to parks and trails, two popular green infrastructures in Salt Lake County, Utah, by analyzing the results of a survey conducted during the pandemic.

Spatial restructuring of pollution-intensive enterprises in Foshan China: Effects of the changing role of environmental regulation.

This paper examines the drivers of distribution of pollution-intensive enterprises (PIEs) at the intraurban level that are less studied. Employing the complete spatial database of PIEs obtained from the National Economic Census of 2004, 2008, and 2013, the paper analyses the spatial restructuring of PIEs within Foshan, China, a typical manufacturing city in transition. We find that the changing role of environmental regulation induced by the environmental policy regime transformation has resulted in the siting strategy shift of PIEs, and both the 'Pollution Haven Hypothesis' and the 'Porter Hypothesis' have been overly simplified in the research conducted at the regional or global level.

Neighborhood, built environment and resilience in transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 has swept the world, and the unprecedented decline in transit ridership has been noticed. However, little attention has been paid to the resilience of the transportation system, particularly in medium-sized cities. Drawing upon a light rail ridership dataset in Salt Lake County from 2017 to 2021, we develop a novel method to measure the vulnerability and resilience of transit ridership using a Bayesian structure time series model.

Interplay of Environmental Regulation and Local Protectionism in China.

Environmental regulation (ER) and local protectionism (LP) are important policy tools for Chinese local governments to improve the environment and promote growth, respectively, but we know little about their interplay in dealing with pollution-intensive industries and enterprises. Using spatial correlation analysis and spatial panel simultaneous equations models, we investigated the spatial characteristics and interactions of the ER and LP in China's 285 prefectural cities. We found that the high-ER-intensity areas were spreading from the eastern to the central and western regions, and the patterns of LP transited from high in the north and low in the south to high in the west and low in the east.

Type 1 Diabetes incidence among youth in Utah: A geographical analysis.

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) poses an increasing threat to public health, as incidence rates continue to rise globally. However, the etiology of T1D is still poorly understood, especially from the perspective of geography. The objective of this research is to examine the incidence of T1D among youth and to identify high-risk clusters and their association with socio-demographic and geographic variables.

Urban inequalities in the 21st century economy.

In the last decade or so, inequality studies have assumed renewed prominence across the social sciences. In this introduction to a special issue of , we set out to articulate the importance of urban spatial context in broader present-day inequality debates. We argue that the information-based economy is emphatically urban-based and that it has forged new spatial inequalities in and between cities and among urban populations.