Territorial impacts of Covid-19 and policy answers in European regions and cities
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented crisis of social, political and economic systems throughout Europe and the world. Since March 2020, European countries, regions and cities have taken diverse measures to try and contain the spread of the virus. These measures, while aiming at easing pressure on the health care systems, have had far-reaching impacts on many sectors of economic activity across the continent.

Covid-19 and the sanitary measures taken to contain its spread have various disruptive impacts on people’s lives and on how cities, metropolitan areas and regions function. Containment measures resulted in abrupt changes in the way people work, study, shop, socialise and move around. The outcomes of these measures have been detrimental in many ways, resulting, inter alia, in people losing their jobs or having to make ends meet with a reduced income, being socially isolated, and/or having to balance work and teaching their children at home.

But there might also be some gains in the wake of the pandemic. First tentative analyses show that digital transition could be accelerated, as the reinforced provision of digital services may result in long-term innovation[1]. Mobility patterns have changed as well since the lockdown periods. Already before the pandemic, cycling had been given a high priority by local and regional policymakers due to its environmental benefits. The pandemic has additionally boosted this development while passenger numbers in public transport plummeted by 70-90% in some major cities[2], which is also a huge challenge for sustainable transport policies. A growing number of European cities have started to supply their citizens with temporary cycling infrastructure (pop-up cycle paths), providing short-term adaptations to their mobility policies. It remains to be seen, though, if these makeshift measures can be transformed into permanent solutions and how and if they could contribute to the green transition of European regions and cities.

Policymakers at all levels of governance require territorial evidence to be able to develop policy measures to cope with the immediate effects of the pandemic in the short-term and to manage its long-term impacts. This applied research activity sets out to contribute to the delivery of such territorial evidence by analysing the geographical patterns of the Covid-19 pandemic from its onset until as far as possible into 2021.  In doing so, it will focus on the direct and indirect social consequences of containment measures, including their territorial dimensions, an aspect that has so far not been addressed by pan-European research at the regional and local level.