This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Medium.
If we continue to ignore how systemic inequalities in housing, transit, public space and food systems disproportionately put marginalized communities at risk, all our efforts to make cities healthy and pandemic-proof will be in vain.
By Isabelle Anguelovski, Panagiota Kotsila and Helen Cole
Environmental justice has many implications for health, and Covid-19 is no exception. As research has shown time and again, low income and minority communities are consistently exposed to greater environmental hazards and have access to fewer environmental amenities than their more affluent counterparts, facing worse health and lower life expectancy. These same cumulative social and environmental vulnerabilities have dramatically increased the risk of infection and mortality due to Covid-19.
While much is being said about making cities more resilient to future outbreaks through measures like density reduction, pedestrianization and urban greening — urban features once thought most important for reducing the risk for non-communicable diseases — it is essential to analyze how inequalities shape the exposure, vulnerability, and eventually the risk and outcome of infectious disease on the ground. We need a careful analysis of underlying and emerging patterns of inequality if we are to craft measures that will make cities safer and healthier for everyone, especially for the most marginalized.
