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Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel

Current debates identifying urban population density as a major catalyst for the spread of COVID-19, and the praise for de-densification and urban sprawl that they entail, may have dire environmental consequences. Juxtaposing competing theories about the urban antecedents of COVID-19, our key argume...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Barak, Nir, Sommer, Udi, Mualam, Nir
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8219944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34182446
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148626
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author Barak, Nir
Sommer, Udi
Mualam, Nir
author_facet Barak, Nir
Sommer, Udi
Mualam, Nir
author_sort Barak, Nir
collection PubMed
description Current debates identifying urban population density as a major catalyst for the spread of COVID-19, and the praise for de-densification and urban sprawl that they entail, may have dire environmental consequences. Juxtaposing competing theories about the urban antecedents of COVID-19, our key argument is that urban political attributes overshadow the effects of cities' spatial characteristics. This is true even when considering levels of compliance with movement restrictions and controlling for demographic and socio-economic conditions. Taking advantage of Israel as a living lab for studying COVID-19, we examine 271 localities during the first 3 months of the outbreak in Israel, a country where over 90% of the population is urban. Rather than density, we find social makeup and politics to have a critical effect. Cities with some types of political minority groups, but not others, exhibit higher infection rates. Compliance has a significant effect and density's influence on the spread of the disease is contingent on urban political attributes. We conclude with assessing how the relationship between the politics of cities and the spread of contagious diseases sheds new light on tensions between neo-Malthusian sentiments and concerns about urban sprawl and environmental degradation.
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spelling pubmed-82199442021-06-23 Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel Barak, Nir Sommer, Udi Mualam, Nir Sci Total Environ Article Current debates identifying urban population density as a major catalyst for the spread of COVID-19, and the praise for de-densification and urban sprawl that they entail, may have dire environmental consequences. Juxtaposing competing theories about the urban antecedents of COVID-19, our key argument is that urban political attributes overshadow the effects of cities' spatial characteristics. This is true even when considering levels of compliance with movement restrictions and controlling for demographic and socio-economic conditions. Taking advantage of Israel as a living lab for studying COVID-19, we examine 271 localities during the first 3 months of the outbreak in Israel, a country where over 90% of the population is urban. Rather than density, we find social makeup and politics to have a critical effect. Cities with some types of political minority groups, but not others, exhibit higher infection rates. Compliance has a significant effect and density's influence on the spread of the disease is contingent on urban political attributes. We conclude with assessing how the relationship between the politics of cities and the spread of contagious diseases sheds new light on tensions between neo-Malthusian sentiments and concerns about urban sprawl and environmental degradation. Elsevier B.V. 2021-11-01 2021-06-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8219944/ /pubmed/34182446 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148626 Text en © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Barak, Nir
Sommer, Udi
Mualam, Nir
Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel
title Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel
title_full Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel
title_fullStr Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel
title_full_unstemmed Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel
title_short Urban attributes and the spread of COVID-19: The effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in Israel
title_sort urban attributes and the spread of covid-19: the effects of density, compliance and socio-political factors in israel
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8219944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34182446
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148626
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