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In recent years the literature on mobility of care has rapidly expanded, and the concept offers a powerful lens to highlight how everyday mobilities are organised, undertaken, and experienced in gendered ways. The concept can nonetheless benefit from further theoretical development. In this paper we enrich the mobility of care concept by drawing on influential conceptualisations of care from feminist theory and analysis of data collected during the COVID-19 lockdown among a group of 40 low-income women living in peri-urban areas of Itagüí, a municipality in the south of the Medellín metropolitan area, Colombia. Through this approach we first argue that relying on a taxonomy of trip purposes limits the understanding of the role of care in urban mobilities and risks underestimating the prevalence of mobility of care. Second, we suggest that activities of self-care also generate mobility of care and that their consideration allows practices and experiences of receiving care to be considered. Finally, we show how care activities are part of, and generate, intertwined mobilities and immobilities, and argue that rendering visible the full extent of mobilities of care demands that careful consideration be given to immobilities as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic provide a unique opportunity to study the effects of restricted socioeconomic activity on air quality. Here, we study the changes in air pollution levels during the lockdown in Medellín and its metropolitan area, Colombia, for periods with and without enhanced regional fire activity, considering the effects of meteorology using random forest and multiple linear regression methods. The lockdown measures, which reduced mean traffic volume by 70% compared to 2016–2019, resulted in reductions for PM2.5 (50–63%), PM10 (59–64%), NO (75–76%), NO2 (43–47%), and CO (40–47%), while O3 concentration increased by 19–22%. In contrast, when fire activity was high, the effects of the lockdown on air quality were shadowed by the long-range transport of biomass burning emissions, increasing fine particulate matter and ozone. This study shows that healthier levels are achievable through significant efforts from decision-makers and society. The results highlight the need to develop integral measures that do not only consider reductions in the local emissions from transportation and industry, but also the role of fire activity in the region, as well as the difficulties of achieving reductions in ozone from measures that are effective at reducing primary pollutants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]