Spatiotemporal evolution pattern and convergence of healthy city development in China

Healthy city development in China shows an overall steady upward trend, but significant regional gradient disparities exist, forming a spatial pattern characterized by high-value agglomerations in coastal and border areas and contiguous low-value clusters in inland hinterlands. Regional disparities generally demonstrate a narrowing trend, with inter-regional disparities being the primary source of overall disparities; the degree of internal differentiation within the eastern region is higher than that of the central and western regions. Convergence exists at both the national level as well as across the eastern, central, and western regions. The eastern region should strengthen economic support and government intervention, the central region should promote the balanced development of healthy cities through urbanization, and the western region should increase financial support and reasonably guide opening-up, so as to drive the convergence of healthy city development. The modular framework constructed in this study, which consists of the evaluation index system, spatiotemporal pattern analysis, and convergence test, features strong universality. Moreover, the research findings can provide scientific guidance for the coordinated development of healthy cities in China and offer a Chinese practical reference for global healthy city construction.