As part of the #EnablingMarginalTerritories series, CRAFT welcomes two leading scholars from the Development Planning Unit at University College London (UCL) for a joint session exploring how cities shape health, justice, and care in marginalized communities across the Global South.

Urban Trends Across Latin America: Health Fragilities in Urban Planning and Urban Transport

Prof. Julio D. Dávila, Development Planning Unit, University College London (UCL)

This lecture offers a broad overview of contemporary public health trends in Latin American cities, arguing that cities are active determinants of health and that architects, transport engineers, and urban planners already play a significant role in shaping it. Prof. Dávila distinguishes between health inequality (measurable differences) and health inequity (what is avoidable and unfair), drawing partly on evidence from the Wellcome-funded SALURBAL project.

The talk examines current demographic, urbanization, and motorization trends, showing how urban sprawl, residential segregation, and market-led redevelopment contribute to health inequities across four domains: urban form and density, mobility, architecture and housing, and air pollution as a shared outcome of all three. While the evidence is not unambiguous, the lecture suggests that compact urban form, mass transit coupled with active mobility, and green infrastructure can help cities reduce health inequity while meeting climate and environmental targets.

Assoc. Prof. Raktim Ray, Development Planning Unit, University College London (UCL)

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed and deepened structural inequalities across geographies, with food insecurity and acute hunger — compounded by state failures to provide support — disproportionately affecting marginalized communities across the postcolonial world. In response, solidarity networks emerged to care for these communities by setting up community kitchens.

This lecture examines two such networks from the postcolonial worlds of Kolkata and São Paulo — the Jadavpur Canteen and MTST's solidarity kitchen — exploring how food justice has become central to practices of care and to resisting dominant state narratives. Through a comparative study, Assoc. Prof. Ray shows how these networks and their infrastructures of care address food justice through the everyday act of food provision, offering an analytical framework for reimagining urban infrastructure amid ongoing polycrisis.