Critical Commentary: Cities in a post-COVID world

Richard Florida, Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Michael Storper
Additional contact information
Richard Florida: University of Toronto, Canada
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose: London School of Economics, UK
Michael Storper: London School of Economics, UK
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Andrés Rodríguez-Pose

Urban Studies, 2023, vol. 60, issue 8, 1509-1531

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic, fiscal, social and political fallout on cities and metropolitan regions. We assess the effect of the pandemic on urban economic geography at the intra- and inter-regional geographic scales in the context of four main forces: the social scarring instilled by the pandemic; the lockdown as a forced experiment; the need to secure the urban built environment against future risks; and changes in the urban form and system. At the macrogeographic scale, we argue the pandemic is unlikely to significantly alter the winner-take-all economic geography and spatial inequality of the global city system. At the microgeographic scale, however, we suggest that it may bring about a series of short-term and some longer-running social changes in the structure and morphology of cities, suburbs and metropolitan regions. The durability and extent of these changes will depend on the timeline and length of the pandemic.

Keywords: cities; COVID-19; pandemic; remote work; urban structure; 城市; æ–°å† è‚ºç‚Ž; å¤§æµ è¡Œ; 远程工作; 城市结构 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980211018072 (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:60:y:2023:i:8:p:1509-1531

DOI: 10.1177/00420980211018072

Access Statistics for this article

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