Last defense in climate change: Assessing healthcare inequities in response to compound environmental risk in a megacity in Northern China.
Cheng, Q. and Sha, S. (2024). Sustainable Cities and Society, 115, 105886.
Back to Journey
2024
Revealing unequal heat, health and adaptation
By 2024, the research had developed a more integrated understanding of urban climate risk. Heat exposure was examined together with healthcare access, resident responses, social relationships, green-space use, and the spatial organisation of the urban environment.
Featured direction
Climate risk as an unequal urban system
Heat risk becomes socially meaningful when exposure is considered together with health services, social support, public space, everyday behaviour, and people’s ability to respond.
Stage summary
Revealing unequal heat, health and adaptation
By 2024, the research had developed a more integrated understanding of urban climate risk. Heat exposure was no longer treated as an isolated environmental condition. It was examined together with healthcare access, social relationships, green-space use, resident behaviour, and urban form. Across these studies, inequality emerged as a mismatch between climate pressure, available resources, and people’s capacity to act.
Publications
Unequal heat exposure and healthcare access
Resisting the heat wave: Revealing inequalities in matching between heat exposure risk and healthcare services in a megacity.
Cheng, Q. and Sha, S. (2024). Applied Geography, 167, 103291.
Resident responses across the heatwave process
Revealing the injustice and factors that affect the resilience responses of residents in the full period of heat waves.
Cheng, Q. and Sha, S. (2024). Sustainable Cities and Society, 107, 105467.
Social infrastructure and collective resilience
Building a reservoir of social resilience: A strategy for social infrastructure regeneration in shrinking cities based on social network analysis.
Sha, S., Cheng, Q. and Lu, M. (2024). Habitat International, 143, 102991.
Green space, health and everyday adaptation
Built or social environment? Effects of perceptions of neighborhood green spaces on resilience of residents to heat waves.
Sha, S. and Cheng, Q. (2024). Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 94, 128267.
Determining the effects of green space usage on health inequalities among residents of shrinking cities based on a social capital perspective.
Sha, S. and Cheng, Q. (2024). Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 97, 128375.
Climate-responsive urban form
Effects of landform and building layout on outdoor thermal environment: A case study of mountain villages in severely cold regions.
Bian, G., Cheng, Q., Yan, G., Sha, S. and Zhen, M. (2024). Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 1–31.
Figures and maps
Heat, services, behaviour and urban form
Representative outputs from this stage include heat-exposure maps, healthcare-access comparisons, resident-response frameworks, green-space and social-capital pathways, and analyses of how spatial form affects outdoor thermal conditions.
- Heat exposure and healthcare mismatch
- Resident responses across the heatwave process
- Green space, social relations, and health
- Urban form and thermal conditions
Datasets
Integrated urban climate and social evidence
The studies combined heat and environmental exposure data, healthcare and accessibility information, resident surveys, green-space use, social-capital indicators, urban-form measures, and outdoor thermal observations.
Notes and updates
What changed in our thinking
A heat map alone cannot explain climate inequality. Urban risk becomes meaningful only when exposure is considered together with health, services, social support, everyday behaviour, and the ability to respond.