Infraestrutura urbana, serviços urbanos e equipamentos coletivos

Around the end of 2019, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 were identified, and from then on, the world we were used to knowing changed globally. The role of population density, in relation to the spread of the pandemic, has been widely scrutinised in urban studies, believed to be the triggering variable. However, the results so far are inconclusive. This paper suggests instead to shift the focus to sociospatial vulnerabilities, as the effects of the pandemic’s spread have been more severe in urban units which feature long-standing inequalities. The paper’s aim is, therefore, twofold: on the one hand it aims at contributing to the debate on population density and COVID-19 in urban areas, and, on the other hand, to analyse the pandemic’s spread in relation to socio-spatial vulnerabilities. Different cities across the globe are drawn into a comparative project, where the pandemic’s spread is analysed in relation to variables of Population Density (PD) and a Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), by employing correlation matrices. The results suggest that there is no significant correlation between density and the spread of COVID-19. Instead, a positive correlation is in place when analysing the pandemic’s diffusion with socio-spatial inequalities.

This paper analyses trends in the living conditions of slum and non-slum populations over the period 1990–2003, using urban and slum indicators from several developing world cities. It explains why where a person lives might condition his/her general health and household vulnerability. The data used are from UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Observatory database for 188 cities belonging to 8 different Millennium Development Goals Regions. The study provides evidence of a general improvement in various slum indicators, such as durable structures, access to safe water and access to improved sanitation. However, although there has been a decrease in under-5 mortality at city level, we observe that the same indicator can be up to five times higher for slum than for non-slum groups. We conclude that this evidence supports the importance of slum improvement and highlights this issue as one of the major challenges that a predominantly urbanized world faces.

Focusing on the labor market outcomes, we present the research methodology discussing the strategy to get rid of the usual identification hypothesis that restricts job locations to the central business district (CBD). Our strategy allows dealing with the simultaneous nature of business and housing locations, and urban prices determination in a richer geographical setting. Before proceeding to that, we look at some stylized facts concerning the spatial structure of our study region.

This paper explores the housing challenges that Rio de Janeiro faces, which is specifically manifested in the form of favelas or squatter settlements, and that municipality’s strategies to overcome these challenges. The Favela Bairro slum upgrading program (FBP), which seeks to transform favelas into formal neighbourhoods, is seen as a complex and appropriate solution to Rio’s housing woes. The paper specifically focuses on land tenure challenges in Rio and the way the FBP dealt with this issue. The FBP is noteworthy as an example of slum upgrading without full land tenure legalization and for its use of state of exception, primarily the concession of right to use but not full ownership of land in order to allow this program to take place. This placed greater emphasis on infrastructural and living condition improvement rather than legalization of land tenure. As a result, the implementation of FBP has had the effect of increasing the security of tenure of favela residents.

COVID-19 initially spread among prominent global cities and soon to the urban centers of countries across the globe. While cities are the hotbeds of activities, they also seem highly exposed to global risks including the pandemic. Using the case of COVID-19 and the World Risk Index framework, this paper examines if the leading cities from the global south are inherently vulnerable and exposed to global risks and can they exacerbate the overall risk of their respective nations. Compared against their respective national averages, most of the 20 cities from 10 countries analyzed in this paper, have higher exposure, lower adaptive capacity, higher coping capacity and varied susceptibility. As this relative understanding is based on respective national averages which are often lower than the global standards, even high performance on certain indicators may still result in elevated predisposition. This paper concludes that the leading urban centers from the global south are highly likely to be predisposed to global risks due to their inherent vulnerability and exposure, and many of the drivers of this predisposition are related to the process of urbanization itself. This predisposition can enhance the overall exposure and vulnerability of the nation in which they are located.

Urban inequality is widely debated but few studies examine developments over time and across cities. In this contribution, we develop a novel approach to study the dynamics of inequality in cities of the Global South. Using a sample that includes cities in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, we track trends in equality since the 1990s in four domains: the labor market, education, private goods, and public amenities. With descriptive statistics, inequality indexes, and logistic regression analysis, we show that while inequality in educational attainment is decreasing across all cities in our sample, patterns in the other domains are more complex. Even though the middle occupational group is growing in most cities in our sample, there are important exceptions and substantial regional variations. While we find that inequality in material comfort more often decreased than increased, class position continues to predict access to both private goods and public amenities. Although the observed patterns are complex, we find no proof of escalating inequalities in the domains under study.

Existing studies on spatial justice discuss how different aspects of spatial injustices repeatedly deprive the poor and low-income urban dwellers of access to urban amenities. According to these studies, increasing equity in the allocation of urban resources for all categories of urbanites can remedy these injustices. However, land tenure security, a pre-condition for access to urban amenities for the poor and low-income urban dwellers, is hardly addressed. This study explores the potential of spatial justice to land tenure security discourse, using a metasynthesis of the literature on both concepts. It draws upon the Brazilian experience of implementing inclusive urban (re)development framework, which aims at integrating the poor and low-income urban dwellers in the urban fabric. Land tenure security is understood from the spatial aspect of social justice, rather than its traditional economic conceptualisation. We find that the pursuit of the three forms of spatial justice (alongside the processes of urban (re)development) promotes the three elements of tenure security differently. Procedural justice is identified as the main driver of land tenure security, whose prominent features are the perceived and the de facto tenure security.

Latin America is a highly urbanized region characterized by remarkable inequality levels, also reflected in an uneven distribution of opportunities, making socio-economic segregation quite visible. Since the individual possibility to travel and therefore access to urban opportunities strongly depends on socio-economic status and the distances to overcome, highly unequal patterns of mobility and accessibility emerge. The continuous expansion of Latin American cities originates specific mobility-related inequalities visible in periurban areas, which tend to lack some key urban opportunities and public transport services usually available in cities. Due to established and new patterns of territorial segregation, these areas may generate new forms of marginality in relation to mobility, posing challenges for public action and territorial governance. Our paper considers if and how periurban areas experience different forms of mobility-related inequalities in three Latin American metropolises in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia (São Paulo, Santiago, and Bogotá, respectively). We do so by examining the differences among urban core and periurban zones based on four elements: socio-demographic features, access to the public transport system, spatial continuity, and functional dependence. Our analysis shows that the three metropolitan regions have different structures: while Bogotá and Santiago appear to be more dependent on the urban core, São Paulo shows more autonomous and self-sufficient periurban zones. The analysis also highlights different forms of peripherality, defined by differentiated mobility patterns and modal choices that suggest that city-specific lines for public action might be needed.

The spontaneous conversion of formal residential and commercial buildings into high-density, informal housing is a major policy issue in the inner cities of developing countries. Yet there remains little research material to date analysing the residence dynamics, environmental health and related policy implications of this form of settlement. This paper presents and compares findings from two preliminary studies of informal sub-divided housing in the cities of São Paulo, Brazil, and Johannesburg, South Africa. It points to some of the policy implications of the work, in the light of broader debate on the management of informal settlements, and calls for further research examining this housing form within developing countries.

Growing global low-income populations living in informal urban settlements need basic services to live healthy, productive, dignified lives, but their informal status presents a legal barrier to service extension. In this paper we explore the informal mechanisms or ‘negotiated institutions’ that emerge to overcome this barrier, and the resulting link between service extension and tenure security. Primary data was collected in São Paulo, Brazil through semi-structured interviews with water supply decision makers and two community-level case studies. Interviews identified four mechanisms for approval of service extension: two forms of ‘permission’ (non-opposition) at the municipal level, a local elected official signing a law (without legal standing) or a unique instance of victory in court. We argue that the factual circumstances of de facto tenure security have to be interpreted through the lens of the entity with the power to evict. Thus, the impact of ‘negotiated institutions’ on de facto tenure security depends on the level of political support. In this case, the use of informal mechanisms to extend services did not change legal tenure status but improved de facto and perceived tenure security. Understanding these ‘negotiated institutions’ and how they emerge is crucial to being able to harness them to the advantage of informal communities that lack access to basic services.