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Migration to urban centres is among the most important forces in contemporary urban studies. In this paper, we study how the demography and epidemic profile of a community are altered when they transition from living in nomadic conditions in a forested environment to a peri-urban settlement in a city of the Amazon basin. We analyse demographic and epidemic data with a multilevel model to understand individual and community-level effects in terms of the risk of malarial infection. We show that malaria becomes endemic when the population settles in the peri-urban area of the city. We also show that the reproductive rate of women in the group increases as they become sedentary, and that while individual fertility rates have no effect on risk of contracting malaria, population-level fertility rates are associated with malaria endemicity.KeyworDS Amazon / Colombia / demography / malaria / migration / peri-urban / public health I. IntroDuCtIonSince 1900, the total global malarious land area has almost halved, being reduced from 77.6 million square kilometres in 1900 to 39.8 million in 2010. (1) However, almost half of the world population lives at risk of contracting malaria, with a 2015 estimate of 212 million cases per year. (2) Today 3.41 billion people are exposed, more than three times the 892 million exposed in 1900. (3) The decline in malarial incidence and areas at risk, combined with general increases in at-risk populations, suggests the transformation of malaria's epidemiological characteristics. That is, malarial infection risk has become more intense in circumscribed areas around the world.Actual incidence of malarial infection has been declining in the world over the past few decades, but often re-emerging in locations where it was no longer a persistent problem, as shown by the data collected by Nájera et al. (4) about the most severe epidemics in the world during the 20th century. Five countries (India, the former USSR, Brazil, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka) have had epidemics with more than 1 million cases and more

Abstract:In recent decades, the majority of cities in developing countries have grown rapidly and have experienced increasing environmental problems. These changes have generated a broad discussion on urban sustainability and development. In this discussion, it is fundamental to establish methods for measuring urban sustainability using a quantitative approach. This research seeks to estimate and evaluate the environmental, social, and economic efficiency of cities in a developing country, Colombia, using data envelopment analysis to determine the changes that occurred between 2005 and 2013. In this study, indicators related to economic, environmental, and social performance are used with the objective of analyzing efficiency from urban sustainability. The results indicate differences among cities, where the efficient cities show adequate resource use, lower environmental impacts, improved social conditions, and guaranteed economic growth and development. Moreover, as the city scale increases, urban sustainability declines. All these findings are important in the formulation and design of adequate urban policies to improve and strengthen sustainability and social welfare over the long term, particularly in cities in developing countries.

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Explanatory models on the urban expansion process have focussed mainly on the dynamic of cities in the developed countries that are characterized by a strong institutional framework, a culture of urban planning, and compliance with the rules. This paper analyses the phenomenon of urban expansion in three Latin American cities (Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Mexico City), taking into account cities with a strong process of urbanization and where the local administration does not have enough control over the growth of cities due to the high rate of migration determining sub-urbanization, peri-urbanization, exo-urbanization, and counter-urbanization processes similar to developed countries. However, these processes may be related to hidden or displaced urbanization in rural areas of municipalities and metropolitan areas or intermediate cities due to the dynamics of urban consolidation. In every Latin American country, the participation and combination of these phenomena are different, although the results are similar: the advance of urban expansion with more segmented, disperse and distant patterns of large urban centres. This analysis determine the characteristics of the urbanization process taking into account physical and geographic aspects, urbanization trends and socioeconomic features in cities selected of Latin America and determines their impact determining the importance to formulate adequate policies that integrates environmental and socioeconomic aspects to achieve sustainable development in urban contexts.