Transformation of Urban–Rural Relationships in the Context of Global Challenges

This article updates and further develops the reflections of "Urbanization and Sustainability after the COVID-19 Pandemic” (Motta 2020). It is now even more urgent to focus on the urban–rural relationships that are being modified by the pandemic, climate change, and the impacts of conflicts, causing serious human insecurities and increasing precarious circumstances worldwide. The fast-changing situation and recurrent emergencies confirm the need for a new urban development approach, related to the specificities of the surrounding environment and based on the revival of towns and settlements spread over territories. This should function as a complementary tool to mitigate urbanization flows and urban–rural gaps, identifying new relationships. This requires the review of current urban paradigms, which are no longer able to respond to modified conditions and demands with an innova-tive vision. This is actualized on the basis of the principles of the social quality theory (SQT) and approach (SQA) and their emphasis on processes in and between the four relevant dimensions of societal life. In the past decade, these principles have been developed tentatively in working papers about sustainability and urban issues from a social quality perspective. © The Author(s).

Exploring the Digital Revolution in Education in India during the COVID-19 Pandemic

One important response to COVID-19 was the intensification of the use of digital media to deliver education. However, the results are paradoxical, since the digital revolution did not lead to improvement of the social quality of teachers' working circumstances. We ana-lyze "internal” or subjective oriented constitutional and "external” or objective orientated conditional factors related to teachers that determine the adaptation of digitalization, taking a social quality perspective. Through a case study in the most advanced educational hub of India—Delhi—we find that the digital revolution helped India to address the first-order problems in digital transformation, namely concerning objective infrastructural facilities. The second-order problems, particularly changing the subjective belief structures of teachers related to the integration of technologies, appear to remain a challenge. As India has recently adopted a new education policy (2020), the findings of our study have significant relevance to improving the accessibility and utilization of digital technology in educational spaces. © The Author(s).

Changes in Development Direction and Mode of Urban Agglomerations in the Pandemic Era: a Chinese Approach

During each pandemic in human history, cities have become the centers of the disasters that have unfolded. The main reason is that cities develop unevenly. Some favorable factors promoting city development are also important factors that facilitate the spread of viruses;the urbanization development path that tends toward polarized development greatly in-creases the risk of central cities becoming epicenters of disaster. This article will take the Wuhan urban agglomeration as an example to explore the reasons for weak points of urban agglomerations in the context of COVID-19, and will then examine their new develop-ment, new directions, new modes, and future. This has extremely important practical value and strategic significance for the high-quality development of China and for the future transformation of the world's urban civilization. © The Author(s).

Technological Inequality and Social Exclusion of Older People during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The digital transformation of contemporary societies may already have been seen by older people as an obstacle;during the pandemic, however, great emphasis was given to technol-ogy. The purpose of this article is to illustrate the phenomenon of social exclusion of older people, linked to their vulnerability and the "COVID circumstances” and shaped by the various measures imposed by different countries to limit physical contact, which led to technological inequality. The findings emphasize the isolation of the elderly and their non-use or insufficient use of health services and long-term care services. Further implications relate to socioeconomic costs arising from the inefficient treatment of their needs regarding their physical and "technological” vulnerability. The article concludes with considerations of the importance of distinct—both individually and collectively oriented—approaches to create better social conditions that will enhance technological equality for the elderly. © The Author(s).

The Case of Australia: Trust During Pandemic Uncertainty—A Qualitative Study of Midlife Women in South Australia

Government responses to COVID-19 have dramatically altered the social quality of daily circumstances. Consequently, theoretical questions about social cohesion require recalibration as we explore new models of social quality. Central to this article is trust, one of the fundamental tenets of social cohesion. We present data from interviews with 40 women in midlife (45–64 years) regarding their everyday experiences of “life in lockdown” during the pandemic. Key themes focus on women’s (dis)trust in individuals (e.g., politicians, public health experts, family, themselves) and systems (e.g., politics, medicine, the media). This study provides insights into the differential impact of the pandemic in shaping public trust and hence social cohesion—in authority, institutions, and “each other”—with important lessons for how future efforts can rebuild trust in post-pandemic times.

The Case of China: The Societal Impact of the “Whole of Government Approach”

This article describes, from a sociopolitical, socioeconomic, and sociocultural perspective, the governance practices of the COVID-19 epidemic control response in China. We describe that, in line with the “whole of government approach,” strong resource mobilization and control of government departments, companies, and citizen communities has worked efficiently to rapidly contain the epidemic. Community participation at the grassroots level has played a decisive part. We assume that the deeply rooted collectivistic Chinese culture has made residents trust the government’s decisions and comply with the prevention and control strategies. We pose some intriguing questions for more analytical comparative research. They concern the normative interpretation of the influences of sociopolitical, economic, and cultural forces, as well as the balance between “collectivism” and “individualism” in societies.

The Case of India: A Moral Foundation for the Impact of COVID-19 on Health and Society in the World’s Largest Democracy

A segmented healthcare system evolved in India by 1990s, whereby the rich population depended on private hospitals while the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid went to the poor-quality public hospitals. In a democracy of equals, unequal access to services became political when COVID-19 began to put pressure on the health system. Corruption that was normalized in a segmented healthcare system could no longer be ignored. To advance the framework of social quality, we examine the corruption that unfolded during the pandemic in India from the perspective of moral foundation theory. We study the issues raised by political parties during the pandemic and court directives responding to citizen grievances. The evidence shows there was inequality of access and that courts had to intervene to try to rectify the situation. In the absence of effective governmental intervention during the pandemic, moral norms become a useful explanatory factor for social quality.

The Case of the United States: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Connectedness and Isolation in Low-Income Communities

Connectedness is vital for health and well-being. Families with lower socioeconomic status and of racial and ethnic minority groups experience inequities in social connections compared to families with higher income and of White race in the United States. We aimed to understand how families in lower-income neighborhoods experienced social connectedness and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic and if and how political, economic, and other societal factors influenced social connectedness. We conducted in-depth interviews with nineteen caregivers of young children in Cincinnati, Ohio. Participants had a decreased sense of social connectedness to family and friends but also across all aspects of their lives. The current crisis has exacerbated preexisting societal conditions within the United States. We can learn from these caregivers how best to bolster social connectedness and disrupt social isolation.

The Case of Italy: The Societal Impact of COVID-19 in a Fragmented Society

The present article makes use of aspects of social quality theory and the social quality approach to assess the impact of the Italian government’s efforts to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. The federal government has a critical role in mitigating the effects of the pandemic;however, the scope and efficacy of its interventions depend on the interplay of processes in four main dimensions: (1) sociopolitical and legal;(2) socioeconomic and financial;(3) sociocultural and welfare;and (4) socioenvironmental and ecological. By analyzing relevant processes in these four dimensions, I aim to understand whether the social quality in Italy has increased or decreased due to the pandemic. The fragmentation in the labor market, in healthcare governance, as well as in societal protection have strongly constrained the government interventions, leaving intact and crystallizing existing societal inequalities.

The Case of Pakistan: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Perceived Well-Being of Displaced Households

This article represents a qualitative investigation of the vulnerabilities of displaced households in Pakistan caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The analyses are conducted through the lens of social quality theory and the social quality approach according to four societal dimensions that condition household life chances. Our findings reveal that these households reflect a reversal of the sustainable development cycle. They are at risk of being economically unstable, being unable to gain new skills, falling into absolute poverty, increased morbidity rates, and disrupted education. The most severe form of deprivation is the disruption of their networks of social cohesion, leading to greater isolation and marginalization;this is especially true for women and children. The Pakistani government must take immediate and substantive action to improve the situations of these most vulnerable of households.

The Case of Brazil: Coloniality and Pandemic Misgovernance as Necropolitical Tools in the Amazon

This article analyzes the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives of the Amazonian populations of Brazil. Following the social quality approach, it inquires into how COVID-19 intertwined with and reinforced underlying trends and inequalities in different life domains expressed in long-term societal complexities, urban–rural dynamics, and environmental transformations. The article finds that the pandemic, following coloniality of power patterns, has been instrumentalized as a necropolitical tool, and has disproportionately impacted certain peoples and territories based on ethnoracial bias. The collapse of the local health system in the State of Amazonas is a systemic burden, not serendipity. A dialogue is proposed between decolonial and social quality approaches to analyze, unveil, and denounce the interplay between the coloniality of power patterns in non-Western contexts.

The Case of the United Kingdom: Mapping Localism, Resilience, and Civic Activism in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article explores the determinants of local resilience in the form of local COVID-19 mutual aid groups. These groups were formed to offer mutual help to those who had experienced a loss of social quality. We test a series of hypotheses, considering which conditional factors are most connected to the formation of these groups, particularly focusing on those that influenced the earliest and most resilient local response to the pandemic. The presence of radical environmentalist activists is a better predictor of resilient community responsiveness than either the activity of the local state or the activity of more moderate community-based environmental civil society organizations. Conclusions are presented on the implications of these findings for the future of localism, social quality, and public policy in the United Kingdom.