Healthy cities or unhealthy islands? The health and social implications of urban inequality

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Author(s)
Stephens, C.
Publication language
English
Pages
22pp
Date published
01 Oct 1996
Publisher
Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 8, No. 2,
Type
Articles
Keywords
Health, Protection, human rights & security, Urban

This paper suggests that governments and international
agencies must address the large and often growing levels
of inequality within most cities if health is to be improved and
poverty reduced. It describes the social and health implications
of inequalities within cities and discusses why descriptions of
the physical symptoms of poverty (and their health implications)
are more common than analyses of the structural systems which
produce and perpetuate poverty. It also describes the health problems
from which low-income groups in urban areas suffer more
than richer groups including those that are not linked to poor
sanitary conditions and those that are more linked to relative
poverty (and thus the level of inequality) than to absolute poverty.