Sustainability

Greenness and education inequalities in life expectancy in Latin American cities: an ecological study

Moran, M
Bilal, U
Dronova, I
Ju, Y
Gouveia, N
Caiaffa, W
Friche, A
Moore, K
Miranda, J
Rodriguez, D
2021
Greenness has been found to be associated with reduced mortality and morbidity and improved wellbeing, with recent evidence further linking it to narrower health inequalities. However, results come mostly from high-income countries and thus might not be generalisable to other settings. In this preliminary analysis, we address this gap by examining whether education inequalities in life expectancy in Latin American cities vary by area-level greenness.We used data from the Salud Urbana en America Latina (SALURBAL) study. The analysis sample included 28 large cities in nine Latin American...

Transit Oriented Development: An Appraisal of Trends and Opportunities for Latin America

Rodriguez, Daniel
2021

In recent years, Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is increasingly accepted due to its great potential for leading cities towards more sustainable futures. This f ruitful coordination between a city’s investments in mass transit and its land development strategy has enabled better accessibility, increased walkability and mixed land use around transit areas. This technical note reviews TOD at several scales in order to comprehend the trends, opportunities and challenges for its development and implementation, with a focus on yielding lessons for Latin America. First, the document discusses...

Desarrollo Orientado al Transporte: una evaluación de tendencias y oportunidades para América Latina

Rodríguez, D
Duran-Ortiz, M
Hobbs, J
Rojas, F
Hudson, A
2021

En los últimos años, el Desarrollo Orientado al Transporte (DOT) ha incrementado su aceptación debido a su gran potencial para guiar ciudades hacia futuros más sostenibles. Esta fructífera coordinación entre las inversiones de una ciudad en transporte público y su estrategia de desarrollo del suelo ha permitido una mejor accesibilidad, una mayor capacidad de caminabilidad y un uso mixto del suelo alrededor de las áreas de transporte. Esta nota técnica revisa el DOT en varias escalas para comprender las tendencias, oportunidades y desafíos para su desarrollo e implementación, con un enfoque...

Extreme temperatures and mortality in 326 Latin American cities

Kephart, JL
Sánchez, BN
Moore, K
Schinasi, LH
Bakhtsiyarava, M
Ju, Y
2021

Climate change and urbanization are rapidly increasing human exposure to extreme ambient temperatures, yet few studies have examined the impact of temperature on mortality across Latin America, where 80% of residents live in urban areas. Methods We used distributed lag nonlinear conditional Poisson models to estimate city-specific associations between daily temperatures above (“heat”) and below (“cold”) each city-specific minimum mortality temperature and all-cause mortality, overall and stratified by age and cause of death. We estimated the percentage of total deaths attributable to heat...

Health and Environmental Co-Benefits of City Urban Form in Latin America: An Ecological Study

Avila-Palencia, I
Sánchez, BN
Rodríguez
Perez-Ferrer
Miranda, J
Gouveia, N
Bilal, U
Useche, A
Wilches-Mogollon, M
Moore, K
Sarmiento, O
Roux, AV Diez
2022
We investigated the association of urban landscape profiles with health and environmental outcomes, and whether those profiles are linked to environmental and health co-benefits. In this ecological study, we used data from 208 cities in 8 Latin American countries of the SALud URBana en América Latina (SALURBAL) project. Four urban landscape profiles were defined with metrics for the fragmentation, isolation, and shape of patches (contiguous area of urban development). Four environmental measures (lack of greenness, PM2.5, NO2, and carbon footprint), two...

Modification of temperature-related human mortality by area-level socioeconomic and demographic characteristics in Latin American cities

Bakhtsiyarava, M
Schinasi, LH
Sánchez, BN
Dronova, I
Kephart, JL
Ju, Y
Gouveia, N
Caiaffa, WT
O'Neill, MS
Yamada, G
Arunachalam, S
Roux, AV Diez
Rodriguez, D
2023

In Latin America, where climate change and rapid urbanization converge, non-optimal ambient temperatures contribute to...

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,...

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...

Uncovering physical activity trade-offs in transportation policy: A spatial agent-based model of Bogotá, Colombia

Stankov, I
Meisel, JD
Sarmiento, OL
Delclòs-Alió, X
Hidalgo, D
2024

Transportation policies can impact health outcomes while simultaneously promoting social equity and environmental sustainability. We developed an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate the impacts of fare subsidies and congestion taxes on commuter decision-making and travel patterns. We report effects on mode share, travel time and transport-related physical activity (PA), including the variability of effects by socioeconomic strata (SES), and the trade-offs that may need to be considered in the implementation of these policies in a context with high levels of necessity-based physical...

Temperature-related mortality in nine Latin American countries under climate change and population scenarios

Kephart, JL
Bakhtsiyarava, M
Sanchez,BN
Arunachalam, S
Mandavilli, R
2024

Climate change and an aging population are converging challenges rapidly accelerating the risk of extreme temperatures for older adults in Latin America. Older adults are especially vulnerable to health impacts from extreme temperatures and in Latin America the proportion of adults aged 65+ years is expected to double by 2050. However, existing projections of temperature-related mortality in Latin America do not incorporate expected population aging, likely severely underestimating future deaths. We estimated temperature-related deaths from 2045-2054 in all cities in nine Latin...