The last two decades have witnessed a growing trend towards transit-oriented development (TOD) as a critical approach for achieving sustainable mobility. However, some analysts and community activists have expressed concerns that TOD could induce gentrification and potential concomitant low-income group displacements. This paper presents a systematic review of 35 quantitative research-based studies presenting evidence on gentrification outcomes resulting from transit-based interventions, published between 2000 and 2018. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review on this topic and thus provides a useful synthesis of current empirical evidence on transit-induced gentrification. Although there is some evidence supporting the transit-induced gentrification hypothesis, methodological flaws render many of the studies' conclusions highly questionable. The findings suggest that gentrification is more closely associated with existing local dynamics, built environment attributes, and accompanying policies than transit-oriented development. In its critical analysis of research approaches, this paper warns that the incorporation of several sources of bias into study designs may engender a number of misinterpretations, thus ultimately leading to misguided conclusions and policies.

The conceptual and methodological debate on urban form has grown in the last decades to recognize that social, economic, demographic and political processes can contribute to the development of new urban forms, especially those related to urban sprawl, as well as to find alternative methodologies for measuring them. Spatial metrics derived from landscape ecology arise as principal indicators to measure urban form. This paper proposes a typology of the urban occupation of Portuguese municipalities. It uses land use/cover data from 1990 and 2006 to extract built-up areas, and it presents five spatial metrics alongside seventeen statistical indicators from 1991 to 2011 most commonly used in the literature to characterize urban occupation. It uses a self-organising map as a visual tool to identify trends and relationships among variables and to cluster municipalities. Based on the self-organising map’s visual clustering, six types of urban occupation of Portuguese municipalities are proposed. In addition, the paper discusses the added value of using indicators that describe both the patterns and the characteristics of the municipalities for making spatial planning decisions in Portugal. The observed results show that spatial metrics are particularly adequate for measuring peri-urban municipalities (urban sprawl areas). These results represent the first multidimensional and systematic analysis of Portuguese urban occupation and they can be the first step in the integration of spatial metrics as indicators that are suitable for the analysis of spatial planning, and also for comparative purposes at a broader geographical scale.

The historical accounts of the 1755 earthquake and tsunami in Lisbon are quite vast providing a general overview of the disaster in the city. However, the details remain unknown. Therefore, the objective of this research is to understand and reconstruct the impact of the 1755 event (earthquake, tsunami, and fire) in downtown Lisbon. Thus, the historical data has been compiled and analyzed, to complement tsunami modeling and a field survey. Although census data are not very accurate, before the disaster there were about 5500 buildings and about 26,200 residents in downtown Lisbon; after the disaster, no records of the buildings were found and there were about 6000–8800 residents. There were about 1000 deaths in the study area. The results also show that the earthquake did not cause significant damage to most of the study area, which contradicts general knowledge. After the earthquake, a fire started that quickly spread throughout the city causing most damage to property. The tsunami hit mostly the west and central parts of the study area. The numerical model results show the tsunami hit the studied area about 60 min after the earthquake, inundating the seafront streets and squares up to 200 m inland. In addition, two major waves were calculated, which are in agreement with the historical accounts.

Sustainable development has become the basis of several worldwide policies over the last few decades, and its role will continue to shape policies for decades to come, especially those that are focused on urban mobility. At the same time, urban mobility is included in the framework of the Healthy Cities movement. In this context, using the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), Portugal, as the study area, this article intends to answer the following research question: are sustainable urban mobility policies contributing to healthy cities? Urban mobility planning and public health instruments were compared with the discourses and practices of those responsible for the implementation of urban mobility policies and Healthy Cities projects. The results reveal that a large number of responses proposed in the mobility planning instruments are, to some extent, related to the principles of healthy cities. Also, while municipal agents tend not to consider the inclusion of those principles, they instead incorporate the concepts of sustainable development. Nevertheless, we found that both approaches overlap the policy directions of healthy cities. On the other hand, public health policies and Healthy Cities projects presented a scarce number of references to its interventions in the urban mobility domain and mainly focused on the promotion of soft modes. It is concluded that, in the case of the observed municipalities of the LMA, the healthy cities framework is greatly benefited by the inclusion of sustainable development principles in all policies, especially those for urban mobility.

What is this summary about? This is a plain language summary of an article originally published in The New England Journal of Medicine. It is about initial results (collected in October 2019) from the JAVELIN Bladder 100 study (a clinical trial), which looked at avelumab maintenance treatment in people with advanced urothelial cancer. Urothelial cancer is the most common type of bladder cancer. People with advanced urothelial cancer often receive chemotherapy. If this is the first treatment people with advanced disease are given, it is called first-line treatment. If the cancer stops growing or shrinks with first-line chemotherapy, people can be given different treatment to try to prevent the cancer from growing again. This is called maintenance treatment. It may help people live longer. What happened in the JAVELIN Bladder 100 study? In the JAVELIN Bladder 100 study, researchers wanted to find out if maintenance treatment with avelumab would help people with advanced urothelial cancer live longer. Avelumab is a type of medicine called immunotherapy. Immunotherapy helps the body's immune system fight cancer. 700 people took part in the study. To take part, they must have already been treated with first-line chemotherapy. Also, their cancer must have shrunk or not grown with this treatment. They were then treated with either avelumab maintenance treatment plus best supportive care or best supportive care alone. Best supportive care means treatments that help improve symptoms and quality of life. These treatments do not affect the cancer directly and can include medicines to relieve pain. What were the results? Researchers found that people treated with avelumab maintenance treatment plus best supportive care lived, on average, 7 months longer than people who received best supportive care alone. People treated with avelumab had more side effects than those not treated with avelumab, but most were not severe. Common side effects with avelumab included persistent tiredness, itchy skin, urinary tract infection, and diarrhea. What do the results of the study mean? Results from the JAVELIN Bladder 100 study support the use of avelumab as maintenance treatment for people with advanced urothelial cancer whose cancer has shrunk or not grown with first-line chemotherapy. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT number: NCT02603432

Background: The role of demographic and socio-economic determinants of COVID-19 transmission is still unclear and is expected to vary in different contexts and epidemic periods. Exploring such determinants may generate a hypothesis about transmission and aid the definition of prevention strategies. Objectives: To identify municipality-level demographic and socio-economic determinants of COVID-19 in Portugal. Methods: We assessed determinants of COVID-19 daily cases at 4 moments of the first COVID-19 epidemic wave in Portugal, related with lockdown and post-lockdown measures. We selected 60 potential determinants from 5 dimensions: population and settlement, disease, economy, social context, and mobility. We conducted a multiple linear regression (MLR) stepwise analysis (p < 0.05) and an artificial neural network (ANN) analysis with the variables to identify predictors of the number of daily cases. Results: For MLR, some of the identified variables were: resident population and population density, exports, overnight stays in touristic facilities, the location quotient of employment in accommodation, catering and similar activities, education, restaurants and lodging, some industries and building construction, the share of the population working outside the municipality, the net migration rate, income, and renting. In ANN, some of the identified variables were: population density and resident population, urbanization, students in higher education, income, exports, social housing buildings, production services employment, and the share of the population working outside the municipality of residence. Conclusions: Several factors were identified as possible determinants of COVID-19 transmission at the municipality level. Despite limitations to the study, we believe that this information should be considered to promote communication and prevention approaches. Further research should be conducted.

Urban mobility plays an important role in addressing urban livability. The complexification and dispersion of travel due to the improvement of transport and the multiplication of our daily living places underline the relevance of multilevel territorial planning, recognizing that the knowledge of local differences is essential for more effective urban policies. This paper aims (1) to comprehend conceptually how urban mobility contributes to the urban livability from the local to metropolitan level and (2) to assess the previous relation toward a livable metropolis based on the readily available statistics for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Hence, a triangulation between conceptual, political/operative, and quantitative/monitoring approaches is required. The methodology follows four steps: (1) literature review focusing on the quantification of urban mobility within the urban livability approach; (2) data collection from the Portuguese statistics system; (3) data analysis and results, using principal component analysis (PCA) followed by cluster analysis (CA); (4) discussion and conclusions. In Portugal, although it is implicit, consistency is evident between the premises of recent urban mobility policies and respective planning instruments, such as the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), and the premises of urban livability as an urban movement. Focusing on the national statistics system, the available indicators that meet our quality criteria are scarce and represent a reduced number of domains. Even so, they allow identifying intra-metropolitan differences in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA) that could support multilevel planning instruments. The results identified five principal components related to commuting at the local and intermunicipal level, including car use as well as social and environmental externalities, and they reorganized the 18 LMA municipalities into eight groups, clearly isolating Lisbon, the capital, from the others. The identification of sensitive territories and respective problems based on urban livability principles is fundamental for an effective urban planning from livable communities to livable metropolis.

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