João Romão (p)

Matthew Lyons

As an activity strongly relying on mobility and personal interactions, tourism received a strong negative impact from the covid-19 pandemic, with severe implications on local and regional economic performances, with the related social implications. On the other hand, the role of tourism contributing to reinforce the negative consequences of the pandemic is also documented in recent studies. These bi-directional effects have different magnitudes in different locations, thus requiring a comprehensive approach that considers a wide range of factors in order to be quantitatively assessed, both in terms of the past and current negative impacts, and mostly in terms of the potencial paths for recovery.
In spite of the limited time passed since the emergence of the pandemic, a large number of studies recently addressed these problems, eventually contributing to support adequate straggles for the resilience of tourism dependent regions. In the case of this activity, it is noteworthy that we could witness a sudden shift from a discussion highly influences by the idea of "over tourism" and the related social and environmental problems on destinations, to a situation of "no tourism", with other type of social and economic impacts.
Although the environmental questions related to climate change or the scarcity of non-renewable resources (like fuel, an especially important input for tourism), the economic recession imposed by the pandemic in many tourism-dependent local economies reinforces the pressure for a recovery of mass tourism, rather than a reorientation of tourism activities for less harmful practices.
In this perspective article, I critically assess and systematize the recent contributions on these topics, with the aim of providing relevant insights and inputs for modeling the relations between tourism dynamics, the covid-19 pandemic and the resilience of tourism-dependent regions, in a context where the calls for climate action meet the pressure for urgent economic recovery.

Cristian Incaltarau (p), Karima Kourtit, Gabriela Carmen Picariu

João Romão

Since the beginning of the 21st century, we live in the ‘urban century’. Features of this emerging ‘urban century’ are: rise in the number of cities and mega-cities and structural population increase in most cities to the detriment of rural areas. Given the declining interest in rurality, the aims and scope of this paper are to map out the complex force field of rurality versus urbanity and explore if the COVID pandemic has induced any changes in the existing patterns. Relying on the Eurobarometer data (April 2021), the study investigates the mobility willingness of the population across the EU countries in the aftermath of the pandemic. Following a decomposition approach, two sets of explanatory variables were used for explaining the bidirectional settlement trends between urban and rural spaces. Whilst the first set of factors refers to different individual characteristics, the second set accounts for the wider contextual country effects. In policy terms, the paper addresses the need for a better understanding of the factors triggering the dynamics of mobility after the corona pandemic and thus urges to further scientific reflection on the future of both urban and rural areas.

Marina Toger (p), Karima Kourtit, Peter Nijkamp

Cristian Incaltarau

Daily mobility-related inequalities intensified during the pandemic. Data-driven analyses showed residents in lower-income and lower-educated neighbourhoods being impacted heavier by the pandemic, possibly due to them working blue collar jobs that required physical presence. However, while the more educated and well-to-do neighbourhoods saw reduced mobility during working time, possibly due to distance working and reduced commuting, that did not hold for leisure times. Then, during holidays and weekends, the observed larger differences in mobility might have contributed to the uneven spread of the virus. In this paper we explore the inequalities in geographic mobility opportunities as observed before, during and in the early post-pandemic (current to the time of the writing) stage, combining Swedish mobile phone data with socio-economic characteristics from the population register. While the data are anonymised, ecologically joined and aggregated, preserving privacy of the individuals, the resulting dataset enables us to compare mobility inequality in areas of varying urbanisation, accessibility to amenities, and having varying economic characteristics resulting from residential sorting. We show how the segregation, already present in the different life domains, is exacerbated by the disruption to mobility accessibility added up to the pre-existing variances in recreational activities. The segregation by leisure opportunities in turn affected the businesses, with prices increasing in Sweden for summer houses, caravans, boats, etc., while more group-oriented leisure businesses experienced difficulties and still are having trouble recovering. Understanding of those processes is important for sustainable development, resilient against disruptions. Leisure activities could be used to introduce mixing as a tool to break the vicious cycles of segregation.

Matthew Lyons (p), Raquel Ortega Argiles, Magda Cepeda Zorrilla, Deniz Sevinc

Marina Toger

The automotive industry is an important part of the UK national economy with an estimated £78.9 billion in turnover and £15.3 billion in GVA and supporting over 800,000 jobs in 2019 (SMMT, 2021). Both Covid-19 and Brexit implementation have disrupted production, demand and trade for industries throughout the automotive supply chain. In the UK new car production is down -29.3% in 2020 and -28.7% in 2021 compared to 2019. Representing the lowest levels of car production since 1984 (SMMT, 2022).

This paper uses a hypothetical extraction method in a multi-region input-output (MRIO) model to estimate the economic impact of the so-called ‘2020 shock’ in the automotive clusters in the Midlands and the North of England in 2020. Initial findings show that the shock in the Midlands cluster was more pronounced leading to a fall in output of £10.9 billion compared to the North £4.9 billion. The regions in the South East of England were found to be relatively insulated to the shock.

As UK policy shifts automotive production towards EVs there are systemic risks to the future of the sector and in turn the economies of the West Midlands and North East. If levelling up is to succeed in these regions there must be a broad understanding of how these can be supported through public investment in manufacturing and the local skills pool.