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The Destruction of US Minority Urban Communities and the Resurgence of Tuberculosis: Ecosystem Dynamics of the White Plague in the Dedeveloping World

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  • R Wallace

    (The Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903, USA and The New York Psychiatric Institute, 722 West 168 Street, New York, NY 10032, USA)

  • D Wallace

    (Public Service Division, Consumers Union, Yonkers, NY 10703, USA)

Abstract

Techniques from population and community ecology and from conservation biology are applied to the growing tuberculosis (TB) epidemic now focused in many US urban minority communities. Modification of a simple spatial model of TB to include the effects of recurring social, political, economic, and other catastrophes shows that a sudden increase in the rate of such factors can markedly and synergistically lower the threshold area density of susceptible population needed for transmission of the disease from an epicenter into surrounding regions, triggering a sudden outbreak of disease from previously endemic or declining epicenters. Detailed application is made to New York City, where a recurrent process of fire, housing abandonment, and forced population displacement affecting poor minority communities threatens to spread multiple drug-resistant strains of the disease throughout a twenty-four-county metropolitan region containing nearly twenty million people. Our work is to be contrasted with that of Blower et al, who concluded that improvements in social conditions were a relatively minor factor in disease control because of the long relaxation time of the infection process.

Suggested Citation

  • R Wallace & D Wallace, 1997. "The Destruction of US Minority Urban Communities and the Resurgence of Tuberculosis: Ecosystem Dynamics of the White Plague in the Dedeveloping World," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(2), pages 269-291, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:29:y:1997:i:2:p:269-291
    DOI: 10.1068/a290269
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. David Arsen, 1992. "Property Tax Assessment Rates and Residential Abandonment," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 361-377, July.
    2. Wallace, D., 1994. "The resurgence of tuberculosis in New York City: A mixed hierarchically and spatially diffused epidemic," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 84(6), pages 1000-1002.
    3. Wallace, Rodrick, 1990. "Urban desertification, public health and public order: 'Planned shrinkage', violent death, substance abuse and AIDS in the Bronx," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 31(7), pages 801-813, January.
    4. Odland, John & Balzer, Blanche, 1979. "Localized externalities, contagious processes and the deterioration of urban housing: An empirical analysis," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 87-93.
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    1. Doriana Delfino & Peter J. Simmons, "undated". "Infectious disease and economic growth: the case of tuberculosis," Discussion Papers 99/23, Department of Economics, University of York.
    2. R Wallace & D Wallace, 1997. "Resilience and Persistence of the Synergism of Plagues: Stochastic Resonance and the Ecology of Disease, Disorder and Disinvestment in US Urban Neighborhoods," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(5), pages 789-804, May.

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