The Post-Pandemic Central Business District (CBD): Re-Imagining the Creative City?

After central business districts (CBD) emptied from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and widespread working-from-home, culture and creativity feature prominently within recovery strategies, enrolling the arts and events to enliven urban precincts and attract people back into city centres. We draw upon resilience theory and creative city policymaking to critique present formulations of CBD revitalisation, and suggest alternatives. Despite overtures to social inclusion and environmental sustainability, revitalisation strategies mobilise pre-existing "vehicular ideas" that support corporate business interests in and claims on central city space. We articulate concerns around inclusivity, financial and property interests, creativity as consumption rather than production, livelihood concerns, and underwhelming acknowledgement of pandemic disruption. Instead of placing creativity in service of the competitive positioning of the CBD, we ask: what is the very purpose of the post-pandemic CBD, and who is the CBD for? Answering these questions invitesmore courageous propositions that seize once-in-a-generation opportunities for transformational change. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR] 由于新冠肺炎疫情的封锁和在家办公的普及，中央商务区(CBD)日渐冷清，文化和创意在复苏战略中占据了突出的位置，引入艺术和活动来活跃城市区域，并吸引人们回到城市中心。我们利用弹性理论和创意城市政策来批判现有的CBD复兴模式，并提出替代方案。尽管提出了社会包容和环境可持续发展的提议，但复兴战略调动了支持企业对中心城市空间商业利益和主张的既有"车辆理念"。我们表达了担忧，包括对包容性、金融和财产利益、将创造力视为消费而不是生产、生计问题以及对疫情破坏平淡无奇的认识。我们不要让创造力为CBD的竞争定位服务，而是要问：大流行后CBD的真正目标是什么，CBD是为谁服务的？回答这些问题需要更大胆的主张，以抓住千载难逢的变革机遇。 (Chinese) [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Urban Policy & Research is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Conditions and perspectives of transformation of urban space related to the liquidation of allotment gardens - a case study of Szczecin (Poland)

Despite the growth in popularity of allotment gardens during COVID-19 pandemic, they still are perceived as potential investment areas to develop residential, service or industry buildings in urban areas. Local authorities often decide to fully or partially liquidate objects in order to transform them into areas having different functions. These kinds of decisions have also been made in Szczecin (Poland), where there are over 100 allotment gardens, as revealed in the inventory carried out. The purpose of this paper is to present selected conditions and directions of transformation of areas connected with the liquidation of allotment gardens, which have taken place in Szczecin in recent years. The location of allotment gardens was also presented in the paper along with defining the intended use of areas as specified in one of Szczecin's main planning documents. Due to the analysis of locational and legal aspects it was possible to highlight legal and location conditions regarding allotments gardens functioning in Szczecin.

The Ideology of Public Space and the New Urban Hygienism: Tactical Urbanism in Times of Pandemic

This essay interprets the implementation of "tactical urbanism” as the latest step in the urban technocratic project aimed at destroying or at least subduing all actual urban life, thus as a form of urbicide. It presents the case of Barcelona, where in the spring of 2020 the "new municipalism” city council developed several interventions based on tactical urbanism, aiming at guaranteeing a prophylactic environment against the spread of COVID19. Though presented as temporary, these transformations ended up being permanent, combining with other urban policies such as the "superblocks” (supermanzanas), justified as countering climate change. The essay argues that these policies aimed at refurbishing outdoor urban spaces reiterate the hygienist vocation of early nineteenth-century urbanism, born as a "science” precisely in the Catalan capital. The growing influence of tactical urbanism is analyzed in the framework of a left-wing municipal government that attempts to develop a new orientation in city governance and that employs as a crucial discourse a rhetoric of public space as an ethical arena for good citizenship. Though this urbanism is exhibited as environmentally friendly, it is inscribed in a long tradition of policies aimed at sanitizing cities by removing their natural tendency at being spaces for conflict. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Urban Regeneration and Touristification in the Sardinian Capital City of Cagliari, Italy

Regeneration agendas and inbound tourism flows have long been considered a remedy for economic crisis. In port cities, a prominent role in urban regeneration is played by the waterfronts, which have been undergoing radical makeovers worldwide since the 1960s. The city of Cagliari stuck to the same recipe, promoting a series of regeneration initiatives and implementing a series of policies to boost the tourism sector. This study combines the use of primary and secondary sources and the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data to create a useful picture of both current reality and historical development of the city. It demonstrated that development strategies promoted in Cagliari, rather than balancing tourism promotion and local community needs, contributed to the amplification and acceleration of the touristification process. Therefore, many of the challenges posed by overtourism, dread in the literature, are today faced by Cagliari and its inhabitants. In addition, the study also identifies in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic a unique opportunity to reverse the touristification process and to achieve a sustainable manner of tourism development. Therefore, it offers some policy recommendations to define principled urban regeneration models, alternatives which are able to achieve urban revitalization while avoiding touristification. © 2023 by the author.

COVID-19 Spatial Policy: A Comparative Review of Urban Policies in the European Union and the Middle East

This article reviews existing research and discussions on urban policy in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis focuses on the first pandemic period in the European Union and the Middle East. A search was conducted in available databases and search engines (Scopus, Google Scholar). A critical bibliometric analysis of publications from the first pandemic period was carried out. The most frequent topics covered were spatial organization, transport, environment, and social issues. The analysis showed that the quantitative scope and depth of the selected topics in the European Union and the Middle East differ. Activities defined as "exploitative” should be considered a particularly interesting point of reference in both analyzed regions. © 2023 by the authors.

Can the establishment of national sanitary cities better resist the impact of COVID-19?

The global spread of COVID-19 has led to profound reflection on building a global public health security system. This paper uses the urban data collected during the COVID-19 epidemic in China in 2020 to evaluate the effect of the National Sanitary City (NSC) policy on the prevention and control of that epidemic at different stages. We found that the NSC policy was able to curb the occurrence and transmission of the epidemic the epidemic effectively after controlling a series of factors such as urban characteristics, population mobility and pathogen transmission. Compared with non-NSCs, the NSCs were better able to control the number of infected people and the infection rate and transmission rate, and this performance was even more impressive when the epidemic gradually entered the sporadic distribution stage. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the impact of the NSC policy on the prevention and control of COVID-19 differs according to the economic development level and population size. To a certain extent, the NSC policy has blocked the spread of viruses by continuously improving the urban medical and health system and strengthening the publicity concerning infectious disease prevention and control knowledge.

Impacts of Covid-19 interventions on air quality: evidence from Brazilian metropolitan regions.

The Covid-19 pandemic has negatively disrupted the way our economy and society functions. Nonetheless, there have also been some positive externalities of the pandemic on the environment. This paper aims to evaluate the concentration of nitrogen dioxide in Brazilian metropolitan regions after the policies adopted to confront Covid-19. In terms of methodological approach, the study employs cross-sectional quantitative analyses to compare the period of 36 days, i.e., 12 March to 16 April-before (in 2019) and after (in 2020) the pandemic declaration. The data were obtained from the Sentinel 5-P low-Earth polar satellite concerning Brazilian metropolitan regions (n = 24). Thorough spatial and statistical analyses were undertaken to identify the pre- and during pandemic nitrogen dioxide concentrations. Complementarily, Spearman's correlation test was performed with variables that impact air quality. The study results a fall in nitrogen dioxide concentration levels in 21 of the 24 metropolitan regions which was observed. The Spearman's correlation coefficient between the nitrogen dioxide variation and the vehicle density was 0.485, at a significance level of 0.05. With these findings in mind, the paper advocates that while the pandemic has a significant negative consequence on the health of population globally, a series of measures that result in a new social organization directly interfere in the reduction of air pollution that contributes to the quality of the air we breathe.

Consumer adoption of autonomous delivery robots in cities: Implications on urban planning and design policies

Five hundred survey responses on consumer acceptance of autonomous delivery robots (ADRs) were collected because the pandemic has increased the emphasis on contactless deliveries, spurring some interest in ADRs to perform last-mile deliveries in urban cities. To examine consumers' intention to adopt ADRs, a comprehensive theoretical model grounded on the Health Belief Model and Task-Technology Fit Model was presented and structural equation modeling was applied to examine the survey data. The analysis revealed that the constructs from both theories have significant effects on outcome expectations and task-technology fit. Additionally, outcome expectations and task-technology fit are strong predictors of consumers' intention, as indicated by their direct and indirect effects. Thus, this study enriches existing research by interpreting consumers' intention to adopt ADRs through health and technology perspectives. It also provides practical implications and policy recommendations for urban planning and design. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd

Is there a post-COVID urban model? The pandemic as a catalyst of urban transformations in Buenos Aires

Since the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, intellectuals and technical urban personnel across the world developed diagnostics and mediatic prophecies about the radical changes that cities would suffer and, particularly, spaces for public use. This text analyzes the urban changes that the Government of the City of Buenos Aires developed during the fourth period of the Republican Proposal Party (2019-2022), in response to the challenge of the pandemic. In addition, these changes are compared with the previous management of the same party between 2007 and 2019. The objective is to trace continuities and ruptures among the programs implemented, in relation to the rhetoric regarding public space, and in the urban planning used to design and justify urban policies. For this, a hybrid methodological design was developed that combines document, spatial, and cultural analysis. The methodological strategy was concentrated on the empirical production and descriptive and interpretative analysis of a documental body that included two main sources -- publications from local government and from mass media. From the results it is evident that, before the conformation of a new post-COVID urban paradigm, local urban management during the pandemic was characterized by the deepening of existing transformations and urban models. Thus, the pandemic operated as a catalyst for changes that were already being developed. (English) [ FROM AUTHOR]

Building back better in urban contexts through a dual ethics of justice and care

The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has had sharp effects in urban settings, both in terms of exposing existing inequalities but also in presenting possibilities for reconfiguring the social and spatial organisation of urban life around new ethical foundations. This has led to political exhortations to 'Build Back Better' (BBB) as a way of avoiding a return to the old 'normal' of deep and enduring structural inequalities. However, scepticism remains about the transformational potential of existing visions of BBB as an urban policy response (Rickett, 2020). It is a notion often riddled with ambiguity that has led to partial, ameliorative responses inadequate to the scale and nature of a pandemic best understood as a totalising crisis that has affected work, family life, production and reproduction (Tooze, 2021). Our provocation is to contend that combining the ethics of justice and care could provide a potentially powerful and far-reaching framework to address the weaknesses of BBB strategies to date.

The Post-Pandemic Central Business District (CBD): Re-Imagining the Creative City?

After central business districts (CBD) emptied from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and widespread working-from-home, culture and creativity feature prominently within recovery strategies, enrolling the arts and events to enliven urban precincts and attract people back into city centres. We draw upon resilience theory and creative city policymaking to critique present formulations of CBD revitalisation, and suggest alternatives. Despite overtures to social inclusion and environmental sustainability, revitalisation strategies mobilise pre-existing "vehicular ideas” that support corporate business interests in and claims on central city space. We articulate concerns around inclusivity, financial and property interests, creativity as consumption rather than production, livelihood concerns, and underwhelming acknowledgement of pandemic disruption. Instead of placing creativity in service of the competitive positioning of the CBD, we ask: what is the very purpose of the post-pandemic CBD, and who is the CBD for? Answering these questions invitesmore courageous propositions that seize once-in-a-generation opportunities for transformational change. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Why are Unfavorable Signs of Overtourism Ignored by Urban Politics? An Attention-based Explanation of No Intervention

As the return of overtourism can be predicted with the dying down of the COVID-19 pandemic, the purpose of this study to explore the factors of its emergence. To achieve the research objective, we draw on the attention-based view for the first time in urban tourism research. This paper argues that the attention of city decision-makers can be severely diverted from problems such as overtourism by strong organizational players. Using a comprehensive research model we show how central governmental economic policy prioritized and sustained city hall’s attention to the growth of the tourism sector to the detriment of handling overtourism in Budapest. The outcomes imply that some governmental players, using a toolkit of rhetoric and discourse, managed to influence the attentional focus of city decision makers. This article describes a means by which urban tourism scholars can model the social interactions that may affect decision-making in a city. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

National Urban Policy – Liberal Party of Australia Statement

The Queensland Premier acknowledged that the City Deal has created jobs in the north of the state and that this has come about because the three levels of government have worked together. The signing of the SEQ Deal demonstrates the Morrison Government's commitment to working with the Queensland Government along with the Council of Mayors (SEQ) and bookends the Morrison's Government city deal delivery over the last six years, delivering a lasting, positive impact on the lifestyle of those who live there. Throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns, I was publicly sceptical of the narrative around the "death of the CBD" - the notion that our CBDs would never fully recover their vitality and economic importance. [Extracted from the article] Copyright of Urban Policy & Research is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Understanding Smart City Policy: Insights from the Strategy Documents of 52 Local Governments

Today, many cities around the globe are interested in developing or adopting smart city policy frameworks;however, the complexity of the smart city concept combined with complicated urban issues makes it a highly challenging task. Moreover, there are limited studies to consolidate our understanding of smart city policymaking. The aim of this study was to bridge this knowledge gap by placing a set of official smart city policy frameworks under the policy analysis microscope. The study approached the analysis by, firstly, internationally collating the smart city policy frameworks of 52 local governments from 17 countries. The methodology then progressed to a deductive content analysis of the identified policies with a thematic data analysis software. The investigation employed the main themes to identify common urban issues in smart city policies—i.e., smart economy, smart environment, smart governance, smart living, smart mobility, and smart people. The results revealed the targeted key planning issues, goals, and priorities, and the ways that smart city policies address these key planning issues, goals, and priorities. The study findings inform policymakers, planners and practitioners on the smart city policy priorities and provide insights for smart city policymaking.

Integrated Approaches to Ecosystem Services: Linking Culture, Circular Economy and Environment through the Re-Use of Open Spaces and Buildings in Europe

Green and blue infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and cultural and built heritage play a key role in enhancing ecosystem services provision and shaping urban quality and communities’ wellbeing calling for an integrated approach to ecosystem services in urban policy and planning and decision-making. On the other side, under-used spaces and buildings have social, cultural, economic, as well as ecological functions and benefits, which are essential to sustainable urban development. The EU has been developing and implementing policies for an integrated approach to urban development and sustainable land use through the implementation of the Urban Agenda for the EU and fourteen associated Partnerships. Thus, it engaged a broad range of institutions and stakeholders across Europe in promoting local projects and sharing best practices on sustainable land use and nature-based solutions, the circular economy, and cultural heritage. This paper reviews the experiences of cities involved in the Partnerships of the Urban Agenda for the EU by illustrating how they related to different modes of ecosystem governance and associated challenges, discussing how three case studies integrate different dimensions of ecosystem services and regeneration in under-used areas and what type of knowledge as well as regulation and governance modes they have developed for supporting innovation in land use planning and management for urban ecosystem services. The results show that appropriate alternative regulations and policies are little explored and that cities adopt an integrated approach, combining cultural, environmental, economic, and social dimensions in their interventions, directly or indirectly enhancing the benefits of built and natural heritage and urban ecosystems in under-used areas. However, some issues, such as nature-based solutions and climate change, are still partially integrated into the projects while priority is given to the cultural, aesthetic, and economic dimensions.

The Theoretical, Practical, and Technological Foundations of the 15-Minute City Model: Proximity and Its Environmental, Social and Economic Benefits for Sustainability

Conventional and emerging paradigms of urbanism require new responses under the current circumstances, especially in relation to the integration of sustainability dimensions and technology advances. The escalating rate of urbanization, coupled with the climate emergency, fundamentally indeed disrupt the challenges that urbanism research and practice deal with, calling for adopting more innovative approaches to urban planning and design. With cities contributing around 65% of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and experiencing an unprecedented growth of population, contemporary urban policy needs to be redefined and re-assessed accordingly. While numerous urban models, such as the Compact City, the Eco-City, the Sustainable City, and the Smart City, have emerged in response to the challenges of sustainability and urbanization, the 15-Minute City has recently gained a steep popularity. This paper explores the theoretical, practical, and technological foundations of the 15-Minute City, with a particular focus on the proximity dimension of mixed land-use and its environmental, social, and economic benefits of sustainability as supported by smart technologies. We argue that this evolving model of urbanism has the potential to gain more expansion and success in regard to building more sustainable, efficient, resilient, equitable, and inclusive cities in line with the global agendas of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11, as it adds a strategic value to the amalgam of the prevailing and emerging paradigms of urbanism and their synergies with respect to increasing the benefits of sustainability while emphasizing its environmental dimension.

Health and Mobility in the Post-pandemic Scenario. An Analysis of the Adaptation of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans in Key Contexts of Italy

The combination of concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic and structural problems relating to social injustice, climate change, and public health requires a radical reorganisation of transport structures, urban services, and the built fabric of metropolitan regions. This need is central to the pandemic era’s public debate: more significantly, it is reflected in the stimuli to metropolitan and urban policies aimed at adapting regional and mobility plans in order to realise a model of a smart, inclusive, sustainable, competitive and resilient city. The paper proposes a comparative content analysis to investigate the SUMPs adopted by the Italian metropolitan cities of Milan and Bologna, as well as their modification via the adoption of emergency plans and adaptation strategies for the post-pandemic scenario. The study’s purpose is to deduce a set of transferable guidelines. Based on earlier research, this study selects the Metropolitan City of Cagliari as a case study for implementing the set of guidelines derived from the comparative content analysis. The study significantly contributes to urban studies by investigating the transformation of concepts and criteria that underpin transport and mobility policies in the Italian context. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Data-driven contact network models of COVID-19 reveal trade-offs between costs and infections for optimal local containment policies.

While several non-pharmacological measures have been implemented for a few months in an effort to slow the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the United States, the disease remains a danger in a number of counties as restrictions are lifted to revive the economy. Making a trade-off between economic recovery and infection control is a major challenge confronting many hard-hit counties. Understanding the transmission process and quantifying the costs of local policies are essential to the task of tackling this challenge. Here, we investigate the dynamic contact patterns of the populations from anonymized, geo-localized mobility data and census and demographic data to create data-driven, agent-based contact networks. We then simulate the epidemic spread with a time-varying contagion model in ten large metropolitan counties in the United States and evaluate a combination of mobility reduction, mask use, and reopening policies. We find that our model captures the spatial-temporal and heterogeneous case trajectory within various counties based on dynamic population behaviors. Our results show that a decision-making tool that considers both economic cost and infection outcomes of policies can be informative in making decisions of local containment strategies for optimal balancing of economic slowdown and virus spread.

Learning to Engage Citizens to Make Smarter Cities

The effectiveness of government policies seems to be a function of increasing citizen participation through the active shaping of public policy and public service delivery (Singh & Kaushik, Platform for citizen engagement for good governance in India (pp. 48–66), 2020). Recognizing the importance of civic engagement, as part of participatory urbanism (Rahmat, Open cities ;Open data: Collaborative cities in the information era (pp. 107–128). Palgrave, 2019) and collaborative governance (Bartoletti & Faccioli, Partecipazione e Conflitto, 13(2), 1132–1151, 2020), this article attempts to highlight and quantify its role in trying to develop the intelligence of a city. This article is based on two pillars. Initially, it decrypts and analyzes the concept of civic engagement and its potential by mapping the dominant bibliographic trends. It then considers the utilization of civic engagement and its integration in the process of developing the intelligence of a city, via a pilot study, the case of the Thessaloniki metropolitan area. Through its two pillars, this article highlights and quantifies the role of civic engagement in the effort to achieve the intelligence of a city and concludes by proposing actions to strengthen and redefine this role. Finally, it is important to emphasize that this article underlines civic engagement in the decision-making process of the respective municipal council or the phase of consultations and proposals and not at the phase of evaluating implemented smart projects. In other words, this article recognizes the importance of preliminary actions and chooses to focus on their benefits. At the same time, it is based on the fact that nowadays, due to the challenges of COVID-19, residents have recognized more keenly than ever the importance of urban space and the benefits of its proper design, so that they may desire to participate more in its urban processes. In addition, residents have become more familiar with the use of technology and are able to use smart applications to evaluate, propose, or vote on municipal project proposals for their cities. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Spaces and scalarity of the present. Re-reading geographies in the Covid-19 pandemic

How has the impact of the coronavirus been inscribed in the bearing of the dominant pattern of urbanization that followed the last global financial crisis? The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of planetary urbanization, which nonetheless seems to have already ushered in a new phase of urban economic recomposition and restructuring. The article points out that the spatial dimension of the pandemic is an important research ground for urban and regional studies and for the definition of policy and planning tools because it calls attention to the rethinking of traditional institutional, economic, political boundaries, and powers. These considerations have deep echoes on possible actions, not only to cope with the emergency but to progressively reinvent some urbanization trajectories at the urban and regional scale. Copyright © FrancoAngeli.