Email this article 
RADICAL CHANGE, OR JUST MORE OF THE SAME? THE SHORT- AND LONG-TERM IMPLICATIONS OF COVID FOR URBAN CHANGE
Abstract
Many cities changed elements of their urban form remarkably rapidly with the onset of COVID-19 in early 2020, which should cause us to rethink some of the long-held views of the processes and speed of urban change. This paper takes a wide view of factors influencing urban change, and applies them to considerations of the speed, nature and extent of changes seen during the COVID pandemic, particularly in 2020-2021. It draws on both observation and media coverage from the UK during that period, and the rapidly-increasing body of academic research since mid-2020. Much change was relatively small-scale and, even when positive and well-received, has proven to be very temporary, and has largely vanished from late 2022 onwards. The ultimate lessons from the pandemic-induced urban change are most likely to be that cities, even historic ones, need to build in more resilience; and that change is necessary, appropriate and deliverable.
Keywords
References
Ahrens, T. and Ferry, L. (2020) Financial resilience of English local government in the aftermath of COVID-19, Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, 32.5, 813823.
Al-Habaibeh, A., Watkins, M., Waried, K. and Javareshk, M.B. (2021) Challenges and opportunities of remotely working from home during Covid-19 pandemic, Global Transitions, 3, 99108.
Andres, L., Bryson, J.R. and Moawad, P. (2021) Temporary urbanisms as policy alternatives to enhance health and well-being in the post-pandemic city, Current Environmental Health Reports, 8, 167176.
Arora, T. and Grey, I. (2020) Health behaviour changes during COVID-19 and the potential consequences: a mini-review, Journal of Health Psychology, 25.9, 11551163.
Baumgartner, F.R., Jones, B.D. and Mortensen, P.B. (2018) Punctuated equilibrium theory: Explaining stability and change in public policymaking, in Sabatier, P. (ed.) Theories of the Policy Process (Routledge: New York) 55101.
BBC (2022) Mixed views on Ceredigions experimental one-way streets, BBC News, 23 February. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-60499205 (accessed August 24 2023).
Birimoglu Okuyan, C. and Begen, M.A. (2022) Working from home during the COVID19 pandemic, its effects on health, and recommendations: the pandemic and beyond, Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 58.1, 173179.
Caniggia, G. (1963) Lettura di una cittŕ: Como (Centro Studi di Storia Urbanistica: Roma).
Cantor, N.F. (2001) In the Wake of the Plague: the Black Death and the World it Made (Simon & Schuster: New York).
Clarke, N.J. (2023) Disease and design in twentieth-century South Africa: exploring the consequences of the 191819 Spanish Flu pandemic through contributions of émigré Dutch architects, Architecture_MPS, 24.1, Article 2. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.amps.2023v24i1.002
Cobbinah, P.B., Erdiaw-Kwasie, M. and Adams, E.A. (2021) COVID-19: can it transform urban planning in Africa?, Cities & Health, 5.sup1, S48S51.
Conzen, M.R.G. (1962) The plan analysis of an English city centre, in Norborg, K. (ed.) Proceedings of the I.G.U. Symposium in Urban Geography, Lund, 1960. Lund Studies in Geography (Royal University of Lund, Department of Geography: Lund), 383414.
Conzen, M.R.G. (1969) Alnwick, Northumberland: a Study in Town-Plan Analysis, 2nd edition. Publication 27 (Institute of British Geographers: London).
Corburn, J. (2009) Toward the Healthy City: People, Places, and the Politics of Urban Planning (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA).
Crang, M. (2000) Urban morphology and the shaping of the transmissable city, City, 4.3, 303315.
Department for Transport (2021) Vehicle speed compliance statistics, Great Britain: July-September 2020.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/955506/vehicle-speed-compliance-statistics-great-britain-july-to-sep-2020.pdf.
dos Santos, P.M., Pasqual, F.M. and Correa, F. (2020) Street transformations to fight COVID-19: ways to create lasting change, Thecityfix, 14 May. https://thecityfix.com/blog/street-transformations-fight-covid-19-3-strategies-create-lasting-change-paula-manoela-dos-santos-francisco-minella-pasqual-fernando-correa/
Eltarabily, S. and Elghezanwy, D. (2020) Post-pandemic cities the impact of COVID-19 on cities and urban design, Architecture Research, 10.3, 7584.
Enoch, M., Monsuur, F., Palaiologou, G., Quddus, M. A., Ellis-Chadwick, F., Morton, C. and Rayner, R. (2022) When COVID-19 came to town: measuring the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on footfall on six high streets in England, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 49.3, 10911111.
Fiorentino, S., Livingstone, N., McAllister, P. and Cooke, H. (2022) The future of the corporate office? Emerging trends in the post-Covid city, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 15.3, 597614.
Francke, A. (2022) Cycling during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, in Heinen, E. and Götschi, T. (eds.) Advances in Transport Policy and Planning. Vol. 10. (Academic Press/Elsevier: Cambridge, MA), 265290.
Freestone, R. and Wheeler, A. (2015) Integrating health into town planning: a history, in Barton, H., Thompson, S., Burgess, S. and Grant, M. (eds.) The Routledge handbook of planning for health and wellbeing (Routledge: Abingdon), 1736.
Frost, P. (2020) An accelerant of social change? The Spanish Flu of 1918-19, International Political Anthropology, 13.2, 123133.
Fukumura, Y.E., Schott, J.M., Lucas, G.M., Becerik-Gerber, B. and Roll, S.C. (2021) Negotiating time and space when working from home: experiences during COVID-19, OTJR: Occupation, Participation and Health, 41.4, 223231.
Gould, S.J. and Eldredge, N. (1972) Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism, in Schopf, T.J.M. (ed.) Models in Paleobiology (Freeman Cooper: New York) 82115.
Grant, W. and Wilson, G.K. (eds.) (2012) Consequences of the Global Financial Crisis (Oxford University Press: Oxford).
Gregg, K., Hess, P., Brody, J. and James, A. (2022) North American street design for the coronavirus pandemic: a typology of emerging interventions, Journal of Urbanism, https://doi.org/10.1080/17549175.2022.2071970
HM Government (2020) COVID-19 secure: safer public places urban centres and green spaces. (HMSO: London).
Hoyt, H. (1960) The Urban Real Estate Cycle (Urban Land Institute: Washington, DC).
Jabareen, Y. and Eizenberg, E. (2021) The failure of urban forms under the COVID-19 epidemic: towards a more just urbanism, Town Planning Review, 92.1, 5763.
Jahshan, E. (2021) UK retail continues rebound as sales leap 13.1% in June, Retail Gazette, 13 July. https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2021/07/uk-retail-continues-rebound-as-sales-leap-13-1-in-june/
Jedwab, R., Johnson, N.D. and Koyama, M. (2019) Pandemics, places, and populations: evidence from the Black Death. GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 19-04. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3331972
Jones, C. and Livingstone, N. (2018) The online high street or the high street online? The implications for the urban retail hierarchy, International Review of Retail, Distribution and Consumer Research, 28.1, 4763.
LABC (2018) What is the average house size in the UK? https://www.labc.co.uk/news/what-average-house-size-uk
Larkham, P.J. (1992) Organic thought in urban geography: the evolution of towns, Australian Geographical Studies, 30.1, 38.
Larkham, P.J. (1995) Constraints of urban history and form upon redevelopment, Geography, 80.2, 111124.
Larkham, P.J. and Adams, D. (2019) Persistence, inertia, adaptation and life cycle: applying urban morphological ideas to conceptualise sustainable city-centre change, ICONARP International Journal of Architecture and Planning, 7.2, 7394.
Lashgari, Y.S. and Shahab, S. (2022) The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on retail in city centres, Sustainability, 14.18, 11463.
Levitt Bernstein (2020) Why the government should end permitted development rights for office to residential conversion. https://issuu.com/levittbernstein/docs/end-pdr-for-office-to-resi_print
Local Government Information Unit (2023) State of local government finance 2023 (LGIU: London).
Lowe, R.J. (2003) Preparing the built environment for climate change, Building Research and Information, 31.34, 195199.
Mach, . (2019) Measuring and assessing the impact of the global economic crisis on European real property market, Journal of Business Economics and Management, 20.6, 11891209.
Maliphant, A. (2022) The climate crisis and regeneration, Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal, 16.1, 620.
Matthews, T. (2020) Coronavirus has changed our sense of place, so together we must re-imagine our cities, The Conversation May 4. https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-has-changed-our-sense-of-place-so-together-we-must-re-imagine-our-cities-137789
McGonigal, J. (2022) Imaginable: how to see the future coming and be ready for anything (Transworld: London).
McGrath, R. (2019) The pace of technology adoption is speeding up, Harvard Business Review, 25 September.
Meerow, S., Newell, J.P. and Stults, M. (2016) Defining urban resilience: a review, Landscape and Urban Planning, 147, 3849.
Mouratidis, K. (2022) COVID-19 and the compact city: Implications for well-being and sustainable urban planning, Science of the Total Environment, 811, 152332.
Németh, J. and Langhorst, J. (2014) Rethinking urban transformation: temporary uses for vacant land, Cities, 40, 143150.
Nicholas, D. (1999) The Transformation of Europe 13001600. (Arnold: London).
Noland, R.B., Iacobucci, E. and Zhang, W. (2023) Public views on the reallocation of street space due to COVID-19, Journal of the American Planning Association, 89.1, 93106.
Reimers, D. (2018) Blueprints for destruction, Naval History 32.4. https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2018/august
Robinson, M. (2023) Retail footfall shows green shoots of post-pandemic recovery, Retail Week, 25 January. https://www.retail-week.com/stores/retail-footfall-shows-green-shoots-of-post-pandemic-recovery/7043059.article
Salama, A. M. (2023) Coronavirus questions that will not go away: interrogating urban and socio-spatial implications of COVID-19 measures, Emerald Open Research, 1.5. https://doi.org/10.1108/EOR-05-2023-0006
Sharifi, A. and Khavarian-Garmsir, A.R. (2020) The COVID-19 pandemic: impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management, Science of the Total Environment, 749, 142391.
Smith, B. (2022) Rees-Mogg: civil servants must make rapid return to office, Civil Service World, 19 April.
Speth, J.G. (2008) Punctuated Equilibrium and the Dynamics of US Environmental Policy (Yale University Press: New Haven).
Statista (2023) Vehicle sales in the UK from 2005 to 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/265959/vehicle-sales-in-the-uk/
Urban Policy and Research (2023) theme issue on cities in COVID-19. Urban Policy and Research, 41.1.
Venerandi, A., Aiello, L. M. and Porta, S. (2023) Urban form and COVID-19 cases and deaths in Greater London: An urban morphometric approach, Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 50.5, 12281243.
Verhulst, L., Casier, C. and Witlox, F. (2023) Street experiments and COVID19: challenges, responses and systemic change, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 114.1, 4357.
Wainwright, O. (2021) The big idea: is the era of the skyscraper over?, The Guardian, 18 October.
Wu, Y., Wei, Y. D. and Liu, M. (2023) Urban form and spatiotemporal vulnerability of local communities to COVID-19, Geographical Review, 113.4, 482501.
Yigitcanlar, T., Wilson, M. and Kamruzzaman, M. (2019) Disruptive impacts of automated driving systems on the built environment and land use: an urban planners perspective, Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity, 5.2, 24.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
FORMA CIVITATIS
International journal of urban and territorial morphological studies; Grünberg Verlag, Weimar-Rostock, http://www.grunbergverlag.de/; Print ISSN: 2748–2812; Online ISSN: 2748-3134
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
For all the licenses authors of papers published in the journal retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions .