IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v31y1999i1p113-139.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Deindustrialization, Inner-City Decay, and the Hierarchical Diffusion of AIDS in the USA: How Neoliberal and Cold War Policies Magnified the Ecological Niche for Emerging Infections and Created a National Security Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • R Wallace
  • D Wallace
  • J E Ullmann

    (2518 Norwood Avenue, Bellmore, New York 11710-1705, USA)

  • H Andrews

    (The New York Psychiatric Institute, Box 47, 722 West 168th Street, New York 10032, USA)

Abstract

AIDS is well known to have diffused hierarchically among US metropolitan regions, from the larger to the smaller, along national travel routes. Here we relate that diffusion to economic and social policy, by using approaches from population and community ecology and quantitative geography. We find that patterns of deindustrialization driven by cold war policies have interacted synergistically with the ‘planned shrinkage’ hollowing-out of poor minority inner-city communities, and with the canonical national travel pattern dominated by the largest cities, to create conditions for the rapid spread of emerging infections. Application of this model to AIDS explains over 92% of the variance in observed case numbers through June 1995 for the 25 largest US metropolitan regions containing 113 million people. ‘Resilience’ analysis of the empirical AIDS model reveals that emerging infections, social disintegration, and national travel patterns constitute a sensitive ‘resonant eigensystem’ which greatly amplifies the impact of such perturbations as recent draconian welfare ‘reforms’. We conclude that ‘neoliberal’ and cold war policies have eroded the foundations of public health in the USA to the extent that emerging infections, including multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis, now constitute a serious security threat. Remedies must include significant progressive reforms, which we discuss at some length, to correct a long-term policy imbalance whose consequences have placed at increasing risk a large and growing fraction of the country's population.

Suggested Citation

  • R Wallace & D Wallace & J E Ullmann & H Andrews, 1999. "Deindustrialization, Inner-City Decay, and the Hierarchical Diffusion of AIDS in the USA: How Neoliberal and Cold War Policies Magnified the Ecological Niche for Emerging Infections and Created a Nati," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(1), pages 113-139, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:31:y:1999:i:1:p:113-139
    DOI: 10.1068/a310113
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a310113
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a310113?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Wallace, Rodrick & Fullilove, Mindy & Fullilove, Robert & Gould, Peter & Wallace, Deborah, 1994. "Will AIDS be contained within U.S. minority urban populations?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 39(8), pages 1051-1062, October.
    3. Wallace, Rodrick & Wallace, Deborah, 1995. "U.S. Apartheid and the spread of AIDS to the suburbs: A multi-city analysis of the political economy of spatial epidemic threshold," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 333-345, August.
    4. 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.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. R Wallace & D Wallace, 1999. "Emerging Infections and Nested Martingales: The Entrainment of Affluent Populations into the Disease Ecology of Marginalization," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(10), pages 1787-1803, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. R Wallace & D Wallace, 1999. "Emerging Infections and Nested Martingales: The Entrainment of Affluent Populations into the Disease Ecology of Marginalization," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(10), pages 1787-1803, October.
    2. Rhodes, Tim & Singer, Merrill & Bourgois, Philippe & Friedman, Samuel R. & Strathdee, Steffanie A., 2005. "The social structural production of HIV risk among injecting drug users," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(5), pages 1026-1044, September.
    3. 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.
    4. R Wallace & A J Flisher & R Fullilove, 1997. "Marginalization, Information, and Infection: Risk Behavior Correlation in Ghettoized Sociogeographic Networks and the Spread of Disease to Majority Populations," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(9), pages 1629-1645, September.
    5. 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.
    6. Deborah Wallace & Rodrick Wallace, 2000. "Life and Death in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx: Toward an Evolutionary Perspective on Catastrophic Social Change," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 32(7), pages 1245-1266, July.
    7. Wallace, Rodrick & Fullilove, Robert E., 2014. "State policy and the political economy of criminal enterprise: mass incarceration and persistent organized hyperviolence in the USA," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 17-31.
    8. Jerry O Jacobson & Nicolas W Hengartner & Thomas A Louis, 2005. "Inequity Measures for Evaluations of Environmental Justice: A Case Study of Close Proximity to Highways in New York City," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(1), pages 21-43, January.
    9. R Wallace, 1994. "A Fractal Model of HIV Transmission on Complex Sociogeographic Networks. Part 2: Spread from a Ghettoized ‘Core Group’ into a ‘General Population’," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 26(5), pages 767-778, May.
    10. Coldefy, Magali & Curtis, Sarah E., 2010. "The geography of institutional psychiatric care in France 1800-2000: Historical analysis of the spatial diffusion of specialised facilities for institutional care of mental illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(12), pages 2117-2129, December.
    11. Rhodes, Tim & Watts, Louise & Davies, Sarah & Martin, Anthea & Smith, Josie & Clark, David & Craine, Noel & Lyons, Marion, 2007. "Risk, shame and the public injector: A qualitative study of drug injecting in South Wales," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 572-585, August.
    12. R Wallace & D Wallace & H Andrews & R Fullilove & M T Fullilove, 1995. "The Spatiotemporal Dynamics of AIDS and TB in the New York Metropolitan Region from a Sociogeographic Perspective: Understanding the Linkages of Central City and Suburbs," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 27(7), pages 1085-1108, July.
    13. Parrado, Emilio A. & Flippen, Chenoa, 2010. "Community attachment, neighborhood context, and sex worker use among Hispanic migrants in Durham, North Carolina, USA," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 70(7), pages 1059-1069, April.
    14. R Wallace & R Fullilove, 1999. "Why Simple Regression Models Work So Well Describing ‘Risk Behaviors’ in the USA," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 31(4), pages 719-734, April.
    15. R Wallace & D Wallace & H Andrews, 1997. "AIDS, Tuberculosis, Violent Crime, and Low Birthweight in Eight US Metropolitan Areas: Public Policy, Stochastic Resonance, and the Regional Diffusion of Inner-City Markers," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 29(3), pages 525-555, March.
    16. Kane, Robert J., 2011. "The ecology of unhealthy places: Violence, birthweight, and the importance of territoriality in structurally disadvantaged communities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(11), pages 1585-1592.
    17. R Wallace, 1993. "A Fractal Model of HIV Transmission on Complex Sociogeographic Networks: Towards Analysis of Large Data Sets," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 25(1), pages 137-148, January.
    18. Xiushi Yang, 2006. "Temporary Migration and HIV Risk Behaviors in China," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 38(8), pages 1527-1543, August.
    19. Avery Guest & Gunnar Almgren & Jon Hussey, 1998. "The ecology of race and socioeconomic distress: infant and working-age mortality in Chicago," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 35(1), pages 23-34, February.
    20. Cohen, Deborah A. & Ghosh-Dastidar, Bonnie & Scribner, Richard & Miu, Angela & Scott, Molly & Robinson, Paul & Farley, Thomas A. & Bluthenthal, Ricky N. & Brown-Taylor, Didra, 2006. "Alcohol outlets, gonorrhea, and the Los Angeles civil unrest: A longitudinal analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(12), pages 3062-3071, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:31:y:1999:i:1:p:113-139. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.