Countries and cities around the world have resorted to unprecedented mobility restrictions to combat COVID-19 transmission. Here we exploit a natural experiment whereby Colombian cities implemented varied lockdown policies based on ID number and gender to analyse the impact of these policies on urban mobility. Using mobile phone data, we find that the restrictiveness of cities’ mobility quotas (the share of residents allowed out daily according to policy advice) does not correlate with mobility reduction. Instead, we find that larger, wealthier cities with more formalized and complex industrial structure experienced greater reductions in mobility. Within cities, wealthier residents are more likely to reduce mobility, and commuters are especially more likely to stay at home when their work is located in wealthy or commercially/industrially formalized neighbourhoods. Hence, our results indicate that cities’ employment characteristics and work-from-home capabilities are the primary determinants of mobility reduction. This finding underscores the need for mitigations aimed at lower income/informal workers, and sheds light on critical dependencies between socio-economic classes in Latin American cities.

世界各地的国家和城市采取了前所未有的行动限制措施来对抗 COVID-19 的传播。在这里，我们利用一个自然实验，哥伦比亚城市根据身份证号码和性别实施不同的封锁政策，以分析这些政策对城市流动性的影响。通过手机数据，我们发现城市流动配额（根据政策建议每天允许外出的居民比例）的限制性与流动性减少并不相关。相反，我们发现，规模更大、更富裕、产业结构更正规、更复杂的城市的流动性下降幅度更大。在城市内，较富裕的居民更有可能减少流动性，而当通勤者的工作地点位于富裕或商业/工业正规化社区时，他们更有可能呆在家里。因此，我们的结果表明，城市的就业特征和在家工作能力是流动性减少的主要决定因素。这一发现强调了针对低收入/非正规工人采取缓解措施的必要性，并揭示了拉丁美洲城市社会经济阶层之间的严重依赖关系。