https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0936-6810
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ABSTRACT
Planetary urbanization exacerbates the spread of infectious disease and the emergence of pandemics. As COVID-19 cases continue to swell in cities around the world, the pandemic has visibilized urban health inequities. In the Global North, emerging trends show that lower income residents are often at greater risk for infection and death due to COVID-19, due in part to inequitable living, working and environmental conditions. We explore the underlying causes and potential long-term implications of the health inequities exemplified by outbreaks of COVID-19 in the context of evolving patterns of urban development, drawing from theories of urban environmental justice and gentrification.
© 2021 Helen Cole. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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Notes on contributors
Helen V. S. Cole
Dr. Helen V. S. Cole is Co-Coordinator of the urban environment, health and equity research area of BCNUEJ and Juan de la Cierva Incorporación fellow at ICTA-UAB and IMIM. Her research explores whether, and how, healthier cities may also be made equitable, placing urban health interventions in the context of the broader urban social and political environments. She holds a Doctorate in Public Health from the City University of New York Graduate Center/Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy and an MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Isabelle Anguelovski
Prof. Isabelle Anguelovski is the director of BCNUEJ, an ICREA Research Professor, a Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator at ICTA-UAB, and coordinator of the research group Healthy Cities and Environmental Justice at IMIM. Trained in Urban Studies and Planning (MIT, 2011), her research examines the extent to which urban plans and policy decisions contribute to more just, resilient, healthy, and sustainable cities. The current ERC-funded project she coordinates, GreenLULUs, explores the extent and magnitude of environmental gentrification in 40 cities as well as civic mobilization to address physical and socio-cultural green displacement and create greater urban green equity.
Francesc Baró
Francesc Baró is postdoctoral researcher at BCNUEJ, ICTA-UAB, and IMIM and Co-Coordinator of the urban ecosystem services research area of BCNUEJ. His research focuses on multi-scale spatial analysis of urban ecosystem services; urban equity analyses in the access to green infrastructure benefits; and assessment of urban nature-based solutions and other greening strategies from a critical perspective. He holds a PhD in Environmental Science and Technology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and a MSc in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC).
Melissa García-Lamarca
Melissa García-Lamarca is a post-doctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB and BCNUEJ, where she is coordinator of Urban Housing and Justice studies. Her research untangles financial and political economic processes that generate urban (housing/green) inequalities, and bottom-up struggles that challenge this inegalitarian status quo. She holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Manchester and an MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development from University College London. Melissa is a member of the Radical Housing Journal editorial collective.
Panagiota Kotsila
Dr. Panagiota Kotsila is a postdoctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB and BCNUEJ. Her research examines the unequal distribution of risk, affecting livelihoods, health and well-being, and how the very concepts of risk, health and well-being are constructed, mobilised and interpreted through and for power. Her recent work critically studies different forms of urban greening/re-naturing and the way interventions inform (in)justice in cities. She is also a member of the WEGO EU network for feminist political ecology and the UAB PI on the WEGO project.
Carmen Pérez del Pulgar
Carmen Pérez del Pulgar is a doctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB and BCNUEJ. Her research focuses on the inclusiveness and environmental justice of urban spaces. She explores the political and social production of green-playful entanglements in cities and questions how conflicting discursive, affective and material registers of green and child friendly cities become populated, renegotiated and fragmented through everyday urban spaces by race, gender and class. She holds an MSc in Human Geography from the Universiteit van Amsterdam and a Bachelor in Political Science from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Galia Shokry
Galia Shokry is a Doctoral Researcher at ICTA-UAB. She is interested in how power relations shape and reconfigure vulnerability, equity, security, and belonging in urban space. Her doctoral research examines the intersection of climate adaptation policies and practices with urban inequalities, green gentrification, and struggles for social and racial justice in the city. She has an MSc from the Department of Sociology of the London School of Economics, and a Master of Urban Studies and Planning from the Ecole d’Urbanisme de Paris.
Margarita Triguero-Mas
Dr. Margarita Triguero-Mas is Co-Coordinator of the urban environment, health and equity research area of BCNUEJ and member of the research group on healthy cities at UAB-ICTA-IMIM, where she also holds a Juan de la Cierva-Formación Fellowship. She is an environmental and public health scientist trained in urban planning, environmental epidemiology, environmental justice and mixed methods. Her research focuses mainly on (i) natural outdoor environments (but also on air pollution, transport and climate), (ii) gentrification, (iii) mental health, (iv) vulnerable populations. Before her current position, she was a researcher at Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal).