Abstract
Urban life can be characterized by dense habitation, crowding, industrialized working, artificial and/or polluted environment, etc.; these factors contribute to the differences of health between rural and urban areas. For public health activities in urban areas, examining the impacts of the changing environment, as well as demographic characteristics on health, is necessary. As has been frequently documented in studies of urban ecology, a city is usually in a process of dynamic and continuous change. During its growth, a city reveals functional and morphological differentiation in its accompanying regional variations of demographic characteristics (BURGESS, 1955; SUZUKI and MATSUYAMA, 1973; TAKEMOTO et al., 1975). We examined the regional variation of characteristics of demography and living environment within the city of Nagasaki and evaluated its impacts on health.
