Birmingham has an ambitious plan up its sleeve. Announced last month, the English city aims to comprehensively transform its urban transport network by 2031. The goal is to make of the city centre a supersized low-traffic neighbourhood. This will involve building a new ring road to keep private cars out, and promoting alternative transport options to keep inhabitants active and on the move.

Quite how this will work, though, as civil engineering expert and Birmingham-based research fellow Joanne Leach explains, hinges on whether the city can overcome its poor track record. The last ring road it built was despised, ineffective and ultimately destroyed. Can it follow through on its pledge to improve public transport, support land-use changes and provide people with the services they need, where they need them? After all, as Leach points out, a city centre serves purposes a simple neighbourhood cannot.

Elsewhere, a moral philosopher and an ethicist ask whether selective lockdowns, like those set to be imposed on the non-vaccinated in Austria and Russia, is ethically justifiable. And three development specialists unpick why Peru – a country which, on paper, seemed well-equipped to face the pandemic – has the world’s highest COVID death rate.

Dale Berning Sawa

Commissioning Editor

New transport plans aim to remove private cars from Birmingham city centre. Chris Baynham | Shutterstock

Birmingham plans to become a supersized low-traffic neighbourhood – will it work?

Joanne Leach, University of Birmingham

When it comes to ring roads, Birmingham has a poor track record. Can the city’s new transport plan buck that trend and benefit both its inhabitants and the environment?

Spitzi-Foto/Shutterstock

Selective lockdowns can be ethically justifiable – here’s why

Jonathan Pugh, University of Oxford; Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford; Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford

Austria has imposed a lockdown for the unvaccinated. Russia is considering the same measure.

Photos of Peruvian doctors who died of COVID, posted outside of the medical college in Lima, Peru. Paolo Aguilar/EPA-EFE

How Peru became the country with the highest COVID death rate in the world

Camila Gianella Malca, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú; Jasmine Gideon, Birkbeck, University of London; María José Romero, SOAS, University of London

The country moved quickly to contain the virus, but its health system struggled to look after those who got sick.

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  • Unpacking parents’ reasons for not vaccinating their children: why it matters

    Sara Cooper, South African Medical Research Council; Alison Swartz, University of Cape Town; Bey-Marrié Schmidt, University of the Western Cape; Charles Shey Wiysonge, South African Medical Research Council; Christopher J Colvin, University of Cape Town; Evanson Z Sambala, University of the Witwatersrand; Natalie Leon, South African Medical Research Council

    Vaccination uptake is influenced by many factors and carries a variety of meanings – social, political, economic, ideological, moral as well as biological.

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