Towards a post-COVID geography of economic activity: Using probability spaces to decipher Montreal’s changing workscapes

Richard Shearmur, Priscilla Ananian, Ugo Lachapelle, Manuela Parra-Lokhorst, Florence Paulhiac, Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay and Alastair Wycliffe-Jones
Additional contact information
Richard Shearmur: McGill University, Canada
Priscilla Ananian: Université du Québec, Canada
Ugo Lachapelle: Université du Québec, Canada
Manuela Parra-Lokhorst: McGill University, Canada
Florence Paulhiac: Université du Québec, Canada
Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay: TELUQ, Canada
Alastair Wycliffe-Jones: McGill University, Canada

Urban Studies, 2022, vol. 59, issue 10, 2053-2075

Abstract: In March 2020, many workers were suddenly forced to work from home. This brought into stark relief the fact that urban economic activity is no longer attached to specific workplaces. This detachment has been analysed in research on organisations and workers, but has not yet been incorporated into concepts used to document and plan the economic geography of cities. In this article, three questions are explored by way of an original survey: first, how can a shift in the location of economic activity be measured at the urban scale whilst incorporating the idea that work is not attached to a single location? Second, what is the nature of the shift that occurred in March 2020? Third, what does this tell us about concepts that have underpinned the study of urban economic form by geographers and planners? Applying concepts developed in organisation studies and sociology, we operationalise the idea that economic activity happens across multiple spaces: it occurs within a probability space, and since March 2020 it has shifted within this space. To better understand and interpret the longer-term impact of this shift on cities – downtowns in particular – we draw upon interviews with people working from home.

Keywords: agglomeration; economic processes; effects of COVID; employment; job location; labour; urbanisation; é›†è š; ç» æµŽè¿‡ç¨‹; æ–°å† è‚ºç‚Ž (COVID) å½±å“; 就业; 工作地点; 劳动力; 城市化 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980211022895 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:59:y:2022:i:10:p:2053-2075

DOI: 10.1177/00420980211022895

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().