Assessing Spatial Inequality of Urban Environmental Health Indicators Case Study: Tehran Metropolis Areas

Living and accessing healthy urban spaces is one of the most important indicators of social and environmental justice. As urban sprawl in developing countries has increased, unequal opportunities have been created for citizens to access healthy urban spaces. And from this perspective, justice has not been respected in the city. . With increasing environmental problems in urban environments, especially metropolitan areas, and the emergence of management problems such as space inequalities and land use change in cities, urban environmental health has become an important issue in urban planning. In the present study, two concepts of spatial justice and environmental health in urban areas of Tehran metropolitan area were investigated. The main purpose in this study is assessment of spatial inequality of urban environmental health indicators among metropolitan areas of Tehran. To investigate this, the UHI model used by the World Health Organization for measuring health in urban areas has been used as well as the advanced CommunityVIZ software that works in the ArcGIS environment. The results of the study show that there are inequalities in urban environmental health indicators among Tehran metropolitan areas. And this inequality follows a cluster pattern, with the north and northwestern regions having better health status than the central and southwestern regions of Tehran metropolis. The results also show that there is a strong correlation between economic, social, environmental-spatial indicators and urban environmental health index. This suggests that any action to promote urban health is not possible without regard to relevant indicators and requires an integrated urban development plan.