Browsing by Author "Rojas Quezada Carolina Alejandra"

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    Accessibility Indicators to Fresh Food: A Quantitative Insight from Concepción, Chile
    (TAYLOR & FRANCIS INC, 2022) Rojas Quezada Carolina Alejandra; Widener, Michael J.; Carrasco, Juan Antonio; Meneses, Fernando; Rodríguez, Tiara; CEDEUS (Chile)
    Accessibility is crucial to establishing and maintaining a nutritious and healthy diet. Although much of the literature on access to healthy food has focused on study areas in the Global North, the topic is of growing relevance to other regions across the globe. In Chile, where the prevalence of chronic diseases related to obesity and diet has increased, and over 50 percent of Chileans are considered overweight or obese, improving accessibility to healthy food has been an essential strat egy for improving health outcomes, including the food environment. In this article, we analyze walking accessibility from homes and workplaces to open street markets and supermarkets that sell fresh fruits and vegetables and consider the role of price in the Concepcion metropolitan area, the second most populated city in Chile. Results suggest that supermarkets and open street markets are distributed in a complementary way. Open street markets have a crucial role in facilitating access to more affordable products for peripheral and low-income areas. Findings also show workplaces increase accessibil ity in a way that is complementary to residential location
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    Elderly Walking Access to Street Markets in Chile: An Asset for Food Security in an Unequal Country
    (2023) Rojas Quezada Carolina Alejandra; Castillo, Bryan; Villegas, Rodrigo; Vecchio, Giovanni; Steiniger, Stefan; Carrasco, Juan Antonio; CEDEUS (Chile)
    Street markets can contribute to food security, since they are a source of fresh food and comparably inexpensive goods, being very relevant for low-income groups. Their relevance is even higher when considering older people, due to their often-constrained financial resources and possibilities to move. To assess the potential contribution of street markets to food security, this paper aims at evaluating to what extent older people have access to such a relevant asset. We consider the case of Chile, an ageing country with an unequal pension system, which makes it relevant for older people to access healthy and inexpensive food. We analyze what proportion of older people (i.e., people over 65) has walking access within 10 min to a street market—feria libre—in each Chilean region, with particular detail in the country’s four major urban areas. We compare the resulting accessibility maps with census data to identify neighborhoods with higher proportions of older people and examine their socio-economic conditions. Our findings show that while street markets are less accessible to older people in comparison to the general population, the inhabitants who can access them belong mainly to low-income groups. The results provide relevant insights to develop neighborhood-based policies for spreading and strengthening street markets, especially in low-income areas with insufficient levels of access to other relevant urban opportunities.
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    Short run “rebound effect” of COVID on the transport carbon footprint
    (Elsevier, 2022) Rojas Quezada Carolina Alejandra; Muñiz, Iván; Quintana, Marc; Simon, Francois; Castillo, Bryan; Rivera, Joaquín
    pandemic completely transformed the mobility of cities. The restrictions on movement led to “empty cities” throughout the world, with some environmental effects in terms of clean air and the reduction of CO2 emissions. This research considers how COVID-19 mobility restrictions have affected the carbon footprint of four medium-sized Chilean cities (Coronel, Temuco, Valdivia, and Osorno) that have environmental problems and are highly dependent on motorized systems. The study uses data from 2400 household surveys at three distinct times: pre-pandemic - T0 (winter 2019), the time of implementation of restrictive mobility policies to contain the pandemic - T1 (winter 2020), and six months later when those restrictions were gradually lifted - T2 (summer 2021). The analysis suggests that CO2 emissions actually went up, declining in the winter 2020, but then increasing with the greater use of cars in the summer 2021 due to the temporary effects of commuting to work, ultimately reaching levels higher than the pre-pandemic values, known as the “rebound effect.”