This work analyses the construction of social isolation as a public problem during the first wave of COVID‐19, drawing on experiences in Rio de Janeiro which, in addition to being one of the country’s major cities, had among the highest mortality rates in Brazil in 2020. We consider both the legal measures enacted by government agencies to contain the contagion and media coverage on the effects of these measures at the local level. The results show that, in the absence of compulsory confinement measures, urban public spaces were deployed both by government agencies and the media in a process by which social isolation was framed as a public problem. Legal measures affected daily patterns of movement, mobility, and sociability, and intervened in the dynamics of central urban functions and in access to and use of public spaces. Media reports gave voice to levels of public agreement or disagreement with regulations and emphasised the significance of legal measures to contain the spread of the virus. Public spaces are at the core of debates about compliance with legal measures to enforce social isolation because they are privileged places where social issues become visible and problematic material expressions of relationships between citizens and the law.
En el campo de los estudios urbanos, la dicotomía entre espacios públicos y de circulación es bastante hegemónica. Recientemente, los debates académicos y políticos alrededor del concepto de movilidad han desafiado esta visión. Se observa un diálogo creciente entre la gestión de los desplazamientos y el fortalecimiento de los espacios públicos, en relación con aspectos morfológicos, políticos y de convivencia en las ciudades. El análisis comparativo de las políticas de movilidad de Bogotá y de Río de Janeiro, desde 1990, evidencia un aumento significativo de la importancia de los espacios públicos, así como también diferencias locales sobre su papel en la planeación del transporte y del crecimiento urbano, en el reconocimiento de nuevas formas de movilidad y en la regulación de la convivencia entre los ciudadanos.
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