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China’s new program gives cities check-ups

Cities — as with complex living systems — could benefit from check-ups, as is happening in a new program in China. However, improvements are needed through adjusting health assessment indicators, enhancing public participation, and integrating the insights of both Eastern and Western medicine.

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Fig. 1: Integrative city health check-ups combining the wisdom of traditional Chinese and Western medicine with an open-ended indicator system.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge financial support provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (42121001, 42471230).

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Correspondence to Chuanglin Fang.

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Nature Cities thanks Zhigang Li, Helen Cole and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Liu, H., Fang, C. China’s new program gives cities check-ups. Nat Cities (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00317-8

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