Pandemics have shaped the way cities are planned and configured. Throughout history, cities have evolved to solve problems of sanitation, hygiene, and health access while providing space and opportunities for the urban dwellers. COVID-19 will have significant implications in the way cities are planned. This recent crisis highlights a number of issues. This paper looks at the context for the pandemic and then reviews studies and debates in four areas: transformations in the configuration of public spaces, transportation, urban connectivities, and urban economies. This pandemic, like other similar episodes in the past, is forcing us to rethink the nature of urban space and may be an opportunity to plan for safer, more sustainable cities.

Ciclovía Recreativa is a program in which streets are closed off to automobiles so that people have a safe and inclusive space for recreation and for being physically active. The study aims were: (1) to compare participant’s spatial trajectories in four Ciclovía Recreativa programs in Latin America (Bogotá, Mexico City, Santiago de Cali, and Santiago de Chile) according to socioeconomic characteristics and urban segregation of these cities; and (2) to assess the relationship between participants’ physical activity (PA) levels and sociodemographic characteristics. We harmonized data of cross-sectional studies including 3282 adults collected between 2015 and 2019. We found the highest mobility for recreation in Bogotá, followed closely by Santiago de Cali. In these two cities, the maximum SES (socioeconomic status) percentile differences between the neighborhood of origin and the neighborhoods visited as part of the Ciclovía use were 33.58 (p-value < 0.001) and 30.38 (p-value < 0.001), respectively, indicating that in these two cities, participants were more likely to visit higher or lower SES neighborhoods than their average SES-of-neighborhood origin. By contrast, participants from Mexico City and Santiago de Chile were more likely to stay in geographic units similar to their average SES-of-origin, having lower overall mobility during leisure time: maximum SES percentile difference 1.55 (p-value < 0.001) and −0.91 (p-value 0.001), respectively. PA levels of participants did not differ by sex or SES. Our results suggest that Ciclovía can be a socially inclusive program in highly unequal and segregated urban environments, which provides a space for PA whilefacilitat physical proximity, exposure to new communities and environments, and interactions between different socioeconomic groups.

This paper assesses whether two factors of wellbeing, social capital (interpersonal trust and social networks) and subjective well-being are associated with frequent mental distress and if there are any mediating effects by gender in a city of high urban violence. This paper relies on data that comes from a sample of over 1300 people representative by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic breakdown of the city of Cali in Colombia, which was collected in 2017 through face-to-face surveys. Our study uses logistic regression with fixed-effects at the district level to control for unobserved time-invariant factors. At the individual level, our analyses account for social and demographic context variables. The dependent variable is mental distress, defined as having 14 or more days feeling mentally ill in the previous 30-day period. Independent variables of interest are "interpersonal trust in unknown people" measured in a scale 0-10 and, social networks measured using the number of family members and close friends and subjective well-being through a question about life satisfaction in a scale 0-10. We find risk factors for mental health distress were low trust in unknown people, low life satisfaction, high levels of depression, living in cohabitation, being female, not having children, and living in middle socio-economic status. The odds of feeling mentally ill decreased as trust in unknown people increased by each unit in the trust scale (OR: 0.92). There were gender differences, with women's mental health being less likely to be affected by lack of interpersonal trust (OR: 0.94) than men (OR: 0.76). Our study suggests that actions aimed at fostering interpersonal trust in unknown people could positively affect mental health distress for both males and females. In the context of high urban violence, our study shows that men are more likely to benefit from such actions.

This paper presents three data sets about the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health and subjective wellbeing in Colombia for three population subgroups: adults (+18 years old), college students, and informal workers. The data was gathered using three different online surveys in Colombia, South America. Each online survey had a different collection process. For adults and informal workers, we use a snowballing sampling strategy. For college students, we use social networks and students associations’ platforms. In total 2253 individuals participated in the data collection. The surveys aims at informing policymakers and academics about the consequences of COVID-19 in the wellbeing of three population groups. The datasets available in this report includes sociodemographic variables, standardized measures of subjective wellbeing, questions concerning to the pandemic and the quarantine, and emotional closeness with friends and keen. Information of informal workers includes a wide range of information about economic outcomes, like job stability, alternative income, financial inclusion, government welfare, and consumption patterns. This paper presents descriptive and correlation analysis of the variables included in the surveys. The information of this report aims at contributing to a broader discussion, beyond the epidemiological side, of the consequences of the pandemic on the population health. This data in brief is valuable by contributing records from a country in the global South, a region where information for policymaking and academic research is usually scarce. Before the pandemic unfolded, there were reports of high subjective wellbeing in Latin America, by studying subjective wellbeing in the middle of a crisis, is possible to examine how a crisis of this dimension affects the population wellbeing and resilience.