Dr. Lei Zou has recently published a collaborative article titled "Associations between vacant urban lands and public health outcomes in growing and shrinking cities." This research is led by Dr. Rui Zhu and Dr. Galen Newman from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University and in collaboration with Dr. Dongying Li and Dr. Yang Song from the same department.
This study evaluates and compares the relationships between vacant urban land and public health outcomes in two cities, St. Louis, MO (shrinking), and Los Angeles, CA (growing). The ordinary least squares (OLS) interaction analysis with a moderator approach was applied. It provides valuable insights into the associations between vacant land characteristics and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in both shrinking and growing cities.
Rui Zhu, Galen Newman, Dongying Li, Yang Song, Lei Zou. (2023). Associations between vacant urban lands and public health outcomes in growing and shrinking cities, Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2023.128127
Figure 1. Geographic location of Los Angeles and St. Louis.
Figure 2. Vacant land examples from each study area (Fig. 2a: vacant land with Furniture and other trash are dumped in St. Louis (Hidalgo, 2018); Fig. 2b: a 157-acre land has never been developed in Los Angeles (Coller, 2022))
Figure 3. Vacant land hotspot analysis for St. Louis and Los Angeles in 2019.
Figure 4. Spatial distribution of NCDs for St. Louis and Los Angeles.
Figure 5. Vacant land characteristics and social vulnerability distribution for St. Louis and Los Angeles.
Congratulations! We look forward to hearing more achievements from GEAR Lab! Gig'em!
