What does the pandemic mean for the future of cities? We?ve seen predictions that COVID-19 is an `extinction-level event? for expensive, commuter-driven megacities. We?ve also seen confidence: if the `death of distance? didn?t finish off big cities in the 1980s, why should this time be different? These debates are bound up ? in the UK and US, at least ? with worries about empty city centres and working from home. At the time of writing, a majority of UK workers is commuting at least once a week (Figure 1, left). But city centre footfall ? especially in the biggest places ? remains well down (Figure 1, right). And within big cities like London, footfall is shifting from cores to suburbs (Anderson, Hesketh et al. 2020)

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1 November 2020

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Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 47(9) , pp.1537-1542, 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/2399808320971910

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399808320971910

This Journal article is published under the centre's Urban programme.