Respiratory Epidemiology and Clinical Research Unit, Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Geography Department, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
J Urban Health. 2024 Jun;101(3):497-507. doi: 10.1007/s11524-024-00855-x. Epub 2024 Apr 8.
Urban environmental factors such as air quality, heat islands, and access to greenspaces and community amenities impact public health. Some vulnerable populations such as low-income groups, children, older adults, new immigrants, and visible minorities live in areas with fewer beneficial conditions, and therefore, face greater health risks. Planning and advocating for equitable healthy urban environments requires systematic analysis of reliable spatial data to identify where vulnerable populations intersect with positive or negative urban/environmental characteristics. To facilitate this effort in Canada, we developed HealthyPlan.City ( https://healthyplan.city/ ), a freely available web mapping platform for users to visualize the spatial patterns of built environment indicators, vulnerable populations, and environmental inequity within over 125 Canadian cities. This tool helps users identify areas within Canadian cities where relatively higher proportions of vulnerable populations experience lower than average levels of beneficial environmental conditions, which we refer to as Equity priority areas. Using nationally standardized environmental data from satellite imagery and other large geospatial databases and demographic data from the Canadian Census, HealthyPlan.City provides a block-by-block snapshot of environmental inequities in Canadian cities. The tool aims to support urban planners, public health professionals, policy makers, and community organizers to identify neighborhoods where targeted investments and improvements to the local environment would simultaneously help communities address environmental inequities, promote public health, and adapt to climate change. In this paper, we report on the key considerations that informed our approach to developing this tool and describe the current web-based application.
城市环境因素，如空气质量、热岛效应以及绿地和社区设施的可达性，都会影响公共健康。一些弱势群体，如低收入群体、儿童、老年人、新移民和少数族裔，生活在环境条件较差的地区，因此面临更大的健康风险。规划和倡导公平的健康城市环境需要系统地分析可靠的空间数据，以确定弱势群体与积极或消极的城市/环境特征的交叉点。为了在加拿大推动这一工作，我们开发了 HealthyPlan.City（https://healthyplan.city/），这是一个免费的网络地图平台，供用户可视化加拿大 125 多个城市的建成环境指标、弱势群体和环境不平等的空间模式。该工具帮助用户识别加拿大城市中相对较高比例的弱势群体体验到低于平均水平的有益环境条件的区域，我们称之为公平优先区域。利用来自卫星图像和其他大型地理空间数据库的全国标准化环境数据以及来自加拿大人口普查的人口数据，HealthyPlan.City 提供了加拿大城市环境不平等的街区级快照。该工具旨在为城市规划者、公共卫生专业人员、政策制定者和社区组织者提供支持，以确定有针对性的投资和改善当地环境的社区，这将有助于社区解决环境不平等问题、促进公共健康和适应气候变化。在本文中，我们报告了为开发此工具而提供信息的关键考虑因素，并描述了当前基于网络的应用程序。
