Gerson Javier Perez Valbuena (p), Paula Barrios

Alexander Pilyasov

Please see extended abstract

Terry Clower (p), Jacob Irving, Keith Waters, Will Rifkin

Gerson Javier Perez Valbuena

see extended abstract

Jaewon Lim (p), Karima Kourtit, Peter Nijkamp

Terry Clower

This paper suggests the broad view on Post-Corona Space Economy with the modeling tourism impact with the growing uncertainty. It argues that health risks and perceptions may induce a more deconcentrated pattern of mass tourism, with more geographical dispersion to rural and natural areas. Facing the Corona pandemic, tourists prefer individual tourism deconcentration to high tourism concentration. Also, the attractiveness of tourism destinations can be drawn from two contrasting perspectives: specialized tourism amenities and rich tourism attractiveness. Based on these two factors, tourism destinations can be classified into the following four types: (1) Tourism Hotspots; (2) Mass Urban Tourism; (3) Lonesome Tourism; (4) Tourism Dispersion. The analytical framework is modeled and applied to extensive data on Las Vegas tourism and its surrounding regions in the U.S. The proposition on deconcentrated tourism concentrations is confirmed during Corona Pandemic. Pre-pandemic outer-inner city complementary relations between “Outdoor Activities” in 11 surrounding national parks and the “Gaming Industry” in Las Vegas have transformed into outer-inner city substitution relations in the COVID-19 pandemic. This represents the evolving deconcentration of tourism concentration facing the growing uncertainty in an inner-city due to health risks in a pandemic. Availability of diversified tourism resources may dampen the shock to a concentrated tourism destination such as Las Vegas when effectively linked to the decentralized but easily accessible tourism resources in dispersed rural and natural areas. However, what draws more attention is how the tourism behaviors are affected and the associated destination choices are made in Post-Corona spatial choice models with the tourism impact under consideration. This paper analyzed if the confirmed deconcentration of the concentrated tourism activities is just a temporary change or a new direction for tourism modeling.

Yegor Kotov, Alexander Pilyasov (p), Nadezhda Zamyatina, Boris Nikitin

Jaewon Lim

Considering the widespread of Covid-19 and its impact on the population health in Russian regions, it is necessary to examine the impact of the pandemic (as excess mortality) on the regional socio-economic development in 2020. Based on a quantitative and qualitative model, the study explains the process of coronavirus diffusion at the regional level, using information from foreign publications, Russian regional statistics and a database of legal documents «Consultant +». The concept of spatial diffusion, developed in the 1950s-1980s, was chosen as the research methodology. The study methods include a cartographic analysis of the monthly dynamics of coronavirus spread in Russian regions and regression analysis of regional differences in excess mortality regarding the most significant explanatory variables. The developed regression model explains the spread of Covid-19 across Russian regions in 2020, while the proposed qualitative model «network-place-scaling» describes the spatial diffusion of the virus. The conducted analysis confirmed the relationship between the spread of the virus and economic specialisation of regions. Simultaneously, such widely discussed factors as physical density, urbanisation level and per capita income did not show significant correlation with excess mortality. The study revealed the following results. There is a significant discrepancy between the actual situation in Russian regions
and expected developments according to the simplified centre-periphery model. The important regression variables, explaining the interregional differences in excess mortality in 2020, include the share of employed in contact-intensive wholesale and retail trade and manufacturing (large production teams); proportion of the population over 65; the number of retail facilities per 1000 people. The qualitative model «network-place-scaling» was deemed suitable for explaining the mechanisms of the spread of coronavirus in Russian regions. Future studies should focus on examining the mechanisms and socio-economic consequences of the pandemic at the municipal level of large cities and urban agglomerations in Russia.
The paper has been prepared with the support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, the research project No. 20–04–60490 Viruses «Development of territorially differentiated methods of regulating socio-economic interactions, sectoral structure and local labor markets in order to ensure balanced regional development in a difficult epidemiological situation».