ITS Berkeley

Bicycle Use in Latin American Cities: Changes Over Time by Socio-Economic PositionBicycle Use in Latin American Cities: Changes Over Time by Socio-Economic Position

Avila-Palencia, I
Gouveia. N
Jáuregui, A
Mascolli, M
Rodriguez, D
Slovic, A
Sarmiento, O
2023

We aimed to examine utilitarian bicycle use among adults from 18 large Latin American cities and its association with socio-economic position (education and income) between 2008 and 2018. Data came from yearly cross-sectional surveys collected by the Development Bank of Latin America (CAF). A total of 77,765 survey respondents with complete data were used to estimate multilevel logistic regression models with city as random intercept and year as random slope. Individuals with high education and high-income levels had lower odds of using a bicycle compared with participants with lower...

Assessing Area Under the Curve as an Alternative to Latent Growth Curve Modeling for Repeated Measures Zero-Inflated Poisson Data: A Simulation Study

Rodriguez, Daniel
2023
Researchers interested in the assessment of substance use trajectories, and predictors of change, have several data analysis options. These include, among others, generalized estimating equations and latent growth curve modeling. One difficulty in the assessment of substance use, however, is the nature of the variables studied. Although counting instances of use (e.g., the number of cigarettes smoked per day) would seem to be the best option, such data present difficulties in that the distribution of these variables is not likely normal. Count variables often follow a Poisson distribution,...

Evaluating the Effects of a Classroom-based Bicycle Education Intervention on Bicycle Activity, Self-Efficacy, Personal Safety, Knowledge, and Mode Choice

Nachman, Elizabeth R.
Rodríguez, Daniel A.
2019

This study provides an evaluation of the impacts of classroom-based adult bicycle education on bicycling activity, confidence and competency self-perceptions while bicycling, knowledge of the bicycling rules of the road, and mode choice in a sample of residents of the San Francisco Bay Area in the US. Changes were measured with self-administered surveys completed before and six weeks after the course intervention. Self-reported data were validated using objective data collected using the Ride Report app. We used multivariable regression analyses to examine changes in self-...

Effects of an Urban Cable Car Intervention on Physical Activity: The TrUST Natural Experiment in Bogotá, Colombia

Baldovino-Chiquillo, L
Sarmiento, OL
O’Donovan, G
Wilches-Mogollon, M
Aguilar, A
Florez-Pregonero, A
Martinez, M
Arellana, J
Guzman, L
Yamada, G
Rodriguez, D
Roux, AV Diez
2023

Cable cars are part of the transport system in several cities in Latin America, but no evaluations of their effects on physical activity are available. TransMiCable is the first cable car in Bogotá, Colombia, and the wider intervention includes renovated parks and playgrounds. We assessed the effects of TransMiCable and the wider intervention on physical activity. The Urban Transformations and Health natural experiment was a prospective quasi-experimental study conducted from Feb 1, 2018, to Dec 18, 2018 (baseline, pre-intervention) and from July 2, 2019, to March 15, 2020 (...

Social Disparities in Flood Exposure and Associations with the Built Environment in 47,187 Urban Neighborhoods in Eight Latin American Countries

Kephart, JL
Bilal, U
Ferreira, A
Gouveia, N
Rodriguez, DA
Barbieri, IS
Miranda, J
Roux, AV Diez
2023
BACKGROUND AND AIM: Climate change is expected to greatly increase population exposure to flooding and related health impacts, particularly in urban areas of the Global South. We aimed to examine within-city social disparities in exposure to flooding within 326 Latin American cities and associated features of the neighborhood environment. METHOD: We used a high spatial resolution dataset of historical flood events from 2000-2018 to describe flood exposure at the neighborhood level for all cities with 100,000+ residents in eight Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,...

Greenness and Excess Deaths from Heat in 323 Latin American Cities: Do Associations Vary According to Climate Zone or Green Space Configuration?

Schinasi, LH
Bakhtsiyarava, M
Sánchez, BN
Kephart, JL
Ju, Y
Arunachalam, S
Gouveia, N
Caiaffa, WT
O'Neill, MS
Dronova, I
Roux, AV Diez
Rodriguez, D
2023
Green vegetation may protect against heat-related death by improving thermal comfort. Few studies have investigated associations of green vegetation with heat-related mortality in Latin America or whether associations are modified by the spatial configuration of green vegetation. We used data from 323 Latin American cities and meta-regression models to estimate associations between city-level greenness, quantified using population-weighted normalized difference vegetation index values and modeled as three-level categorical terms, and excess deaths from heat (heat excess death fractions [heat...

Ambient Nitrogen Dioxide in 47 187 Neighbourhoods Across 326 cities in Eight Latin American Countries: Population Exposures and Associations with Urban Features

Kephart, JL
Gouveia, N
Rodriguez, DA
Indvik, K
Alfaro, T
Texcalac-Sangrador, JL
Miranda, J
Usama, B
Roux, AV Diez
2023

Health research on ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is sparse in Latin America, despite the high prevalence of NO2-associated respiratory diseases in the region. This study describes within-city distributions of ambient NO2 concentrations at high spatial resolution and urban characteristics associated with neighbourhood ambient NO2 in 326 Latin American cities. We aggregated estimates of annual surface NO2 at 1 km2 spatial...

Recent Greening May Curb Urban Warming in Latin American Cities of Better Economic Conditions

Ju, Y
Dronova, I
Rodriguez, D
Bakhtsiyarava, M
Farah, I
2023
Rising temperatures have profound impacts on the well-being of urban residents. However, factors explaining the temporal variability of urban thermal environment, or urban warming, remain insufficiently understood, especially in the Global South. Addressing this gap, we studied the relationship between city-level economic conditions and urban warming, and how urban green space mediated this relationship, focusing on 359 major Latin American cities between 2001 and 2022. While effect sizes varied by economic and temperature measures used, we found that better economic conditions were...

Tracking the State and Behavior of People in Response to COVID-19 Through the Fusion of Multiple Longitudinal Data Streams

Bouzaghrane, MA
Obeid, H
Hayes, D
Chen, M
Li, M
Parker, M
Rodriguez, D
Frick, K
Sengupta, R
Walker, J
2023

The changing nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of comprehensively considering its impacts and considering changes over time. Most COVID-19 related research addresses narrowly focused research questions and is therefore limited in addressing the complexities created by the interrelated impacts of the pandemic. Such research generally makes use of only one of either (1) actively collected data such as surveys, or (2) passively collected data from sources such as mobile phones or financial transactions. So far, only one other study collects both active and passive...

A Scaling Investigation of Urban Form Features in Latin America Cities

Paiva, SS
Santos, GF
Castro, CP
Rodriguez, DA
Bilal, U
Filho, F
Anderson, F
Montes, F
Dronova, I
Barreto, M
Andrade, R
2023

This paper examines scaling behaviors of urban landscape and street design metrics with respect to city population in Latin America. We used data from the SALURBAL project, which has compiled and harmonized data on health, social, and built environment for 371 Latin American cities above 100,000 inhabitants. These metrics included total urbanized area, effective mesh size, area in km2 and number of streets. We obtained scaling relations by regressing log(metric) on log (city population). The results show an overall sub-linear scaling behavior of most variables, indicating a...