The COVID-19 pandemic as disruptive force for urbanization

The Covid-19 pandemic is changing the everyday life of society. Lockdown-situations as experienced since March 2020 have been totally new to societies in Western Europe and most places of the world. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic people have been confronted with travel restrictions and curfews and most of us have experienced what home-office and home-schooling feel like. Suddenly, the advantages of urban life such as cultural liveliness and global economic connectedness were being undermined. We have been spending more time at home and in the immediate neighbourhood since the outbreak of the pandemic. got many thinking: How do I actually live? How do I want to live? And where? Meanwhile, we know that the pandemic did not only influence our everyday life for a short, limited period of time but that we have to cope with its impact also in the long run. From a geographic perspective, it is particularly interesting to investigate regional differences of the pandemics impact. People living in big cities might face very different challenges than people living at the countryside. Together with this, housing preferences and the ways people use public spaces, transport, and urban amenities change. All these changes impact our societal life and pose questions for future urban and regional planning. The CURB project deals with the question of whether the experiences of the pandemic will actually lead to a renaissance of the rural and whether the growth of cities in the global century of urbanization will be slowed down. After all, the spatial implications of the pandemic pose long-term threats to a sustainable urban development. In search of new knowledge, the CURB project is collecting evidence through various sources. First, the project team will do a systematic review of media reports with a focus on the geography of the pandemic. At the core, a map-based online survey using an innovative public participation GIS methodology (PPGIS) will be conducted among a sample of 30,000 households in Eastern Austria. The online survey focuses on spatial perceptions, spatial practices, and residential preferences during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Eastern Austria shows the full range of varying regional types, from the metropolitan core of Vienna to rural peripheral border areas. In addition to concrete findings on how people reflect on their local living conditions during the pandemic, the CURB project contributes to the advancement of understanding urbanization under crisis conditions. The project team will involve a team of practitioners of urban planning, real estate and related fields to discuss the project results. This expert panel will meet and discuss during several stages of the CURB project with the ultimate aim of inspiring future sustainable urban planning.