ABSTRACT
Describing in turn the rise of a social geography of pathology in Paris in the nineteenth century, the social isolation of the elderly, and the emergence of particular cityscapes that exacerbated vulnerability during the disaster, this chapter indicates the possibilities for a historically situated examination of epidemiological disparities in the contemporary city. Where nineteenth-century hygienists pioneered a social geography approach to urban epidemiology, contemporary scholars have refined these techniques, developing quantitative indices and qualitative evaluations of vulnerability in the modern environment. By the early nineteenth century, however, the rapid urbanization of Europe facilitated the emergence of a new form of medical geography, one that focused on the social disparities of sickness and health that characterized distinct regions of cities. A geographer who studies natural disasters, Cutter has developed a Social Vulnerability Index with the aim of providing a metric for determining vulnerability to natural hazards in a given environment.
