Resumen de Land use perception of self-reported health: Exploratory analysis of anthropogenic land use phenotypes
Eric Vaz, Michael Cusimano, Tony Hernandez
This paper investigates the spatial heterogeneity of self-reported health in the Greater Toronto Area in relation to its land use. This is implemented by means of local spatial autocorrelation of response types of the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and land use. Spatial heterogeneity was tested by assessment of the stratified responses of the survey, ranging from excellent to poor. A total of 8212 collected surveys from the CCHS master file for 2010 were used. Georeferenced surveys were agglomerated at census tract level, and spatial autocorrelation followed assessing of frequency distribution. The geography of the hotpots of surveys per response type was conducted. The resulting hotspots were compared to the properties of their land use types as to understand what the influence on surrounding land use on self-reported health is. A significant spatial autocorrelation exists over the region area concerning health perception, forming clusters in certain regions. A negative influence on self-reported health was found in commercial and industrial land use, while open spaces, on the other hands show significantly positive responses. While resource and industrial land use share a negative influence of self-reported health, open spaces and parks and recreational areas may lead to a better health perception. From a landscape and planning perspective, we argue that land use plays a crucial role in the complex social factors of health self-report. Geographic Information Systems and spatial analysis may allow to better understanding the combination of health factors and land use, as to allow a better planning of infrastructure and anthropogenic land use phenotypes for increasing health self-perception and wellbeing in developed countries.
