AIDS Deaths in the Bronx 1983–1988: Spatiotemporal Analysis from a Sociogeographic Perspective

Abstract

Patterns of AIDS deaths, in space and time, are examined for the populous Bronx section of New York City in view of the continuing massive destruction of housing and disruption of community which has affected the South Bronx since the early 1970s. Annual Bronx AIDS deaths are studied simultaneously in geographic space and in a dual ‘social variate’ space, and it is found that study of linked changes in each deeply illuminates patterns in both. This analysis reinforces a rapidly growing body of work which suggests control of AIDS in the United States, particularly prevention of a widespread and relentlessly rising heterosexual phase of the epidemic, may well prove impossible without a timely, general, and considerable program of reform and renewal for its disintegrating inner cities.