Dividends

Abstract

Healthy city is an important aspect of sustainable city and society. This study constructed a healthy city evaluation framework, and calculated the healthy city index (HCI) of 258 cities in China in 2016 by using the entropy weight method. The results show disparities in the construction of healthy cities in China. The level of healthy city development in China was not optimistic, healthy class V and IV cities accounted for more than 80% of all cities, while healthy class I and II cities accounted for only 6.2%. Healthy city development was dramatically imbalanced, and large-scale cities and eastern developed areas led in healthy development. The HCI in eastern region was 1.50, 1.54 and 1.58 times that of the central, western and northeastern regions. The Moran's I was 0.151, indicating that the healthy development of cities had obvious learning and synergistic effects. Coal consumption, city size, meteorological conditions, economic development and education level were related to the healthy city development level in China. Promoting fairness in allocation of medical, sports, and education resources, strengthening health-oriented urban planning, and upgrading the energy structure will help raise the level of healthy city development in China, which should be verified in the future.