Exposure to heat is a growing public health concern as climate change accelerates worldwide. Different socioeconomic and racial groups often face unequal exposure to heat as well as increased heat-related sickness, mortality, and energy costs. We provide new insight into thermal inequities by analyzing 20 Southwestern U.S. metropolitan regions at the census block group scale for three temperature scenarios (average summer heat, extreme summer heat, and average summer nighttime heat). We first compared average temperatures for top and bottom decile block groups according to demographic variables. Then we used spatial regression models to investigate the extent to which exposure to heat (measured by land surface temperature) varies according to income and race. Large thermal inequities exist within all the regions studied. On average, the poorest 10% of neighborhoods in an urban region were 2.2 °C (4 °F) hotter than the wealthiest 10% on both extreme heat days and average summer days. The difference was as high as 3.3–3.7 °C (6–7 °F) in California metro areas such as Palm Springs and the Inland Empire. A similar pattern held for Latinx neighborhoods. Temperature disparities at night were much smaller (usually ~1 °F). Disparities for Black neighborhoods were also lower, perhaps because Black populations are small in most of these cities. California urban regions show stronger thermal disparities than those in other Southwestern states, perhaps because inexpensive water has led to more extensive vegetation in affluent neighborhoods. Our findings provide new details about urban thermal inequities and reinforce the need for programs to reduce the disproportionate heat experienced by disadvantaged communities.

Significance: Exposure to air pollution within one’s residential neighborhood has detrimental consequences on health and well-being. Yet, this effect may be mitigated or exacerbated because individuals spend much of their time outside of their residential neighborhood to travel to neighborhoods across a city for work, errands, and leisure. Using mobile phone data to track neighborhood mobility in large US cities, I find that residents from minority and poor neighborhoods travel to neighborhoods that have greater air pollution levels than the neighborhoods that residents from White and nonpoor neighborhoods visit. These results reveal that minority and poor residents face environmental inequalities at three geographic scales: the neighborhoods they live in, their bordering neighborhoods, and the neighborhoods they visit.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a central framework for guiding sustainable urban development. However, it is not clear how and where SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) is being implemented, and how such implementation might be improved. We investigate this subject by analyzing United Nations (UN) SDG Good Practices data from 2018 to 2021, using content analysis, classification, and descriptive statistics. The resulting analysis and classification is new in this field. We applied five criteria to the 336 SDG 11 responses: (1) geography; (2) actors; (3) progress toward targets; (4) areas of implementation; and (5) scale of action. Overall, 86 of the 193 countries that adopted the 2030 Agenda submitted at least one SDG 11 good practice. Thirty-three countries contributed 73.8% of the total, and most developing countries did not make submissions. A very small number of responses (between 2.6 and 9.1%) addressed equity-related targets. Good practices from developed countries were usually more technology-oriented and system-forming; developing countries typically focused on issues of day-to-day concern. This analysis points to the need for better and more systematic reporting on SDG 11 implementation, a more active public sector role in SDG implementation and reporting, more focus on dimensions related to social equity, and better formulation of urban sustainability targets and indicators.

Ridehailing services such as Uber have been promoted as viable interventions for curbing alcohol-involved driving fatalities. However, evidence of ridehailing’s impact has been mixed, with some studies finding no association but others finding either an increase or a decrease in fatalities. We contribute to this literature by examining more recent years of data, which capture a period during which Uber ridership has grown substantially and alcohol-involved fatalities have increased. Furthermore, we test whether the relationship between Uber availability and traffic fatalities depends on local characteristics. We employ multivariate regression models to test the association between Uber availability and total, alcohol-involved, and weekend and holiday-specific traffic fatalities in the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the United States between 2009 and 2017. We find that Uber availability is not associated with changes in total, alcohol-involved, and weekend and holiday-specific traffic fatalities in aggregate, yet it is associated with increased traffic fatalities in urban, densely populated counties.

This study investigates the relationship between government fines and neighborhood composition using data on parking citations in Los Angeles. Parking ticket fines have received significant attention in public debates concerning bias in government and law enforcement practices. In these debates, community advocates claim that parking citations are spatially concentrated in neighborhoods of predominantly economically vulnerable populations. Using parking ticket data in 2016 from the City of Los Angeles, this study shows that the number of parking tickets is higher in neighborhoods with a larger presence of renters, young adults, and Black residents. The study also finds that the burden on Black neighborhoods is not alleviated by Black representation in city council. However, Hispanic neighborhoods with a Hispanic council representative experienced higher parking ticket rates for regulations that are more likely to be violated by visitors, specifically, violations occurring during the evening and overnight hours, and specific to time-limit and permit-related regulations.