Volume 3: Public Space and Mobility

Description

Reflects not only on the challenges but also the opportunities facing cities in the wake of COVID-19 and showcases how the pandemic (and its economic fallout) have created new inequalities while exacerbated existing ones. COVID-19 is an invisible threat that has hugely impacted cities and their inhabitants. Yet its impact is very visible, perhaps most so in urban public spaces and spaces of mobility. This international volume explores the transformations of public space and public transport in response to COVID-19 across the world, both those resulting from official governmental regulations and from everyday practices of urban citizens. The contributors discuss how the virus made urban inequalities sharper and clearer, and redefined public spaces in the "new normal". Offering crucial insights for reforming cities to be more resilient to future crises, this is an invaluable resource for scholars and policy makers alike.

Tess Osborne is Lecturer and Researcher in Human Geography at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Director, Urban Pollinators Stijn Oosterlynck is Associate Professor in Urban Sociology at the University of Antwerp. His research is concerned with local social innovation and welfare state restructuring, the political sociology of urban development, urban renewal and community building and new forms of solidarity in diversity. Rianne van Melik is Assistant Professor in Urban Geography at the Institute for Management Research (IMR), Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Pierre Filion is Professor at the School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Canada. Brian Doucet is the Canada Research Chair in Urban Change and Social Inclusion and an Associate Professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

"This book provides an excellent collection of critical views that make us think about the changing meaning of public space in its relation to human beings and their mobility in the post COVID-19 era. It operationalizes abstract concepts like 'justice' and 'inequality' through colorful and diverse examples of public spaces from all over the world, illustrated by critical scholars." Tuna Tasan-Kok, University of Amsterdam