Corrigendum: Assessing Inequalities in Wellbeing at a Neighbourhood Scale in Low-Middle-Income-Country Secondary Cities and Their Implications for Long-Term Livability.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fsoc.2021.729453.].

Assessing Inequalities in Wellbeing at a Neighbourhood Scale in Low-Middle-Income-Country Secondary Cities and Their Implications for Long-Term Livability.

To ensure future sustainability, cities need to consider concepts of livability and resident wellbeing alongside environmental, economic and infrastructure development equity. The current rapid urbanization experienced in many regions is leading to sustainability challenges, but also offers the opportunity to deliver infrastructure supporting the social aspects of cities and the services that underpin them alongside economic growth. Unfortunately, evidence of what is needed to deliver urban wellbeing is largely absent from the global south. This paper contributes to filling this knowledge gap through a novel interdisciplinary mixed methods study undertaken in two rapidly changing cities (one Thai and one Kenyan) using qualitative surveys, subjective wellbeing and stress measurements, and spatial analysis of urban infrastructure distribution. We find the absence of basic infrastructure (including waste removal, water availability and quality) unsurprisingly causes significant stress for city residents. However, once these services are in place, smaller variations (inequalities) in social (crime, tenure) and environmental (noise, air quality) conditions begin to play a greater role in determining differences in subjective wellbeing across a city. Our results indicate that spending time in urban greenspaces can mitigate the stressful impacts of city living even for residents of informal neighborhoods. Our data also highlights the importance of places that enable social interactions supporting wellbeing-whether green or built. These results demonstrate the need for diversity and equity in the provision of public realm spaces to ensure social and spatial justice. These findings strengthen the need to promote long term livability in LMIC urban planning alongside economic growth, environmental sustainability, and resilience.

Macro- and microclimatic interactions can drive variation in species' habitat associations.

Many species are more restricted in their habitat associations at the leading edges of their range margins, but some species have broadened their habitat associations in these regions during recent climate change. We examine the effects of multiple, interacting climatic variables on spatial and temporal patterns of species' habitat associations, using the speckled wood butterfly, Pararge aegeria, in Britain, as our model taxon. Our analyses reveal that this species, traditionally regarded as a woodland-dependent insect, is less restricted to woodland in regions with warmer winters and warmer and wetter summers. In addition, over the past 40 years of climate change, the species has become less restricted to woodland in locations where temperature and summer rainfall have increased most. We show that these patterns arise mechanistically because larval growth rates are slower in open (i.e. nonwoodland) habitats associated with colder microclimates in winter and greater host plant desiccation in summer. We conclude that macro- and microclimatic interactions drive variation in species' habitat associations, which for our study species resulted predominantly in a widening of habitat associations under climate change. However, species vary in their climatic and nonclimatic requirements, and so complex spatial and temporal patterns of changes in habitat associations are likely to be observed in future as the climate changes.

Temperature-dependent alterations in host use drive rapid range expansion in a butterfly.

Responses of species to climate change are extremely variable, perhaps because of climate-related changes to interactions among species. We show that temperature-related changes in the dependence of the butterfly Aricia agestis on different larval host plants have facilitated rapid range expansion. Historically, the butterfly was largely restricted to a single plant species, Helianthemum nummularium, but recent warmer conditions have enabled the butterfly to increasingly use the more widespread plant species Geranium molle. This has resulted in a substantial increase in available habitat and rapid range expansion by the butterfly (79 kilometers northward in Britain in 20 years). Interactions among species are often seen as constraints on species' responses to climate change, but we show that temperature-dependent changes to interspecific interactions can also facilitate change.