Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences最新文献

The creative industries are a strategically important sector for the Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) which houses large public sector broadcasters and an ecosystem of IT and software businesses. The CCR is an administrative boundary in Wales which captures just under half of the Welsh population but over half of the Welsh economy. The pandemic and resultant lockdown restrictions have had profound impacts on the creative industries, a sector which depends heavily on in-person interaction. The creative industries are not one homogenous sector, but a collection of different activities some of which faced different supply and demand conditions due to the COVID-19 shock. To understand the impact of the shock in fine inter-industry detail and at a sub-regional scale an input-output table for the Cardiff Capital Region (the CCRC-IO) is utilized. The CCRC-IO estimates that the direct, indirect, and induced impacts of the shock see output fall by £457 m (0.53% of CCR output), GVA by £147 m (0.58% of CCR GVA) and FTE employment by 2416 (0.58% of CCR FTE). The paper finds that the economic impact of the COVID-19 shock varies considerably by both geography and sub-sector.

COVID-19 revealed some major weaknesses and threats that are related to the level of territorial development. In Romania, the manifestation and the impact of the pandemic were not homogenous, which was influenced, to a large extent, by a diversity of sociodemographic, economic, and environmental/geographic factors. The paper is an exploratory analysis focused on selecting and integrating multiple indicators that could explain the spatial differentiation of COVID-19-related excess mortality (EXCMORT) in 2020 and 2021. These indicators include, among others, health infrastructure, population density and mobility, health services, education, the ageing population and distance to the closest urban center. We analyzed the data from local (LAU2) and county level (NUTS3) by applying multiple linear regression and geographically weighted regression models. The results show that mobility and lower social distancing were far more critical factors for higher mortality than the intrinsic vulnerability of the population, at least in the first two years of COVID-19. However, the highly differentiated patterns and specificities of different areas of Romania resulting from the modelling of EXCMORT factors drive to the conclusion that the decision-making approaches should be place-specific in order to have more efficiency in case of pandemics.

COVID-19 has a dramatic impact on the use of public transport (PT). Most European cities report a decline in PT use during 2020 and 2021. Nevertheless, not all cities report similar decline patterns or comparable resilience paths. We investigate the resilience patterns of PT use during 2020 and 2021 in 15 European cities from 11 different countries using clustering and regression analysis of data originating from Google Mobility Reports, the Oxford Policy Stringency Tracker, and COVID-19 reports. Results highlight the variety of resilience patterns of PT use in these 15 cities. These patterns vary in time and space. PT use in some cities recovered faster and more significantly than in others. Findings also suggest that changes in retail and recreational routines had the highest impact on the resilience of PT use in most cities. Changes in workplace routines are also important, but to a lesser degree. The impact of policy stringency on PT use is significant, but less consistent between the 15 cities.

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the European continent at the beginning of 2020, one of the most significant socio-economic effects that immediately become the central focus of media and governing bodies was the unemployment and the sudden transformations suffered by the job market. This effect created major concerns for citizens and governing structures, as the pandemic generated a new and unparalleled economic context, where the short and medium-term future of several sectors seemed unpredictable. The concern acted upon the job insecurity of individuals, a perceived threat to the continuity and stability of their employment. Based on a self-reported survey covering the first pandemic wave, our study classifies the regions (NUTS2 level) from six EU countries according to their performance in terms of job insecurity, but also the shock intensity (death rates and case fatality ratio), and identifies the overall over and under performers. The results show that the regional evolution of the job insecurity could be linked to the pandemic evolution, especially in the stronger economies. However, the model does not follow a classic economic core-periphery pattern. The model is challenged especially by a stronger performance of several less performant regions from Italy, Romania, or France.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12076-023-00337-9.

The physical structure of cities is the result of self-organization processes in which profit-maximizing developers are key players. The recent Covid-19 pandemic was a natural experiment by means of which it is possible to gain insights into shifts in the spatial structure of cities by studying developers' behavior. Behavioral changes of urbanites triggered by the quarantine and lockdown periods, such as home-based work and online shopping on scales that were unthinkable heretofore, are expected to persist. These are likely to induce changes in the demand for housing, for work, and for retail space, impacting developers' decisions. Associated changes in the land values at different locations are occurring faster than changes of the physical shape of urban landscapes. It is possible that current changes in dwelling preferences will result in significant future shifts in the locational incidence of the urban intensities. We test this hypothesis by examining changes in land values during the last two years by means of a land value model calibrated with vast Geo-referenced data of the major metropolitan area in Israel. Data concerning all real estate transactions include information about the assets and the price of the exchanges. In parallel, built densities are calculated using detailed building data. Based on these data, we estimate the changes of land values for different types of dwellings before and during the pandemic. The result allows us to highlight possible initial signs of post-Covid-19 urban structures, driven by shifting behavior of developers.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12076-023-00346-8.

The effectiveness and political feasibility of COVID-19 containment measures such as lockdowns, are contentious. This stems in part from an absence of tools for their rigorous evaluation. Common epidemiological models such as the SEIR model generally lack the spatial resolution required for micro-level containment actions, the visualization capabilities for communicating measures such as localized lockdowns and the scenario-testing capabilities for assessing different alternatives. We present an individual-level ABM that generates geo-social networks animated by agent-agent and agent-building interactions. The model simulates real-world contexts and is demonstrated for the city of Jerusalem. Simulation outputs yield much useful information for evaluating the effectiveness of lockdowns. These include network-generated socio-spatial contagion chains for individual agents, dynamic building level contagion processes and neighborhood-level patterns of COVID-19 imports and exports useful in identifying super-spreader neighborhoods. The policy implications afforded by these various outputs are discussed.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12076-023-00336-w.

We study the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on U.S. entrepreneurial activities, as measured by the overall number of new business applications, high-propensity business applications, business applications from corporations, and business applications with paid wages. However, the number of business applications increased significantly after the lockdown. Also, the portion of high-propensity business applications as a share of total business applications declined considerably during and after the lockdown. Our findings could partially explain the tight labor market in the U.S. during the pandemic.