ABSTRACT
Most research into urban service delivery has centred around issues of equity, efficiency, social well-being and community conflict surrounding the location of particular facilities and amenities. In this chapter, the evolution and locational dynamics of one particular group of services — medical care — is reviewed in order to illustrate the formative influence of changes in economic and social structure on subsequent spatial relationships between producers and consumers or, in this case, medical care professionals and their patients. The central argument is that, in order to understand the geography of medical care, it is essential to appreciate the interaction of changes in science, technology, residential segregation, medical care settings, economic cycles, professional structure and state intervention: all of which must be seen, in turn, as part of the overall dynamic of urbanisation. The dynamics of urbanisation subsumed a number of processes which are relevant to the evolution of medical care systems.
