Urban exodus? Understanding human mobility in Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic using Meta-Facebook data.

Existing empirical work has focused on assessing the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions on human mobility to contain the spread of COVID-19. Less is known about the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the spatial patterns of population movement within countries. Anecdotal evidence of an urban exodus from large cities to rural areas emerged during early phases of the pandemic across western societies.

Functional signatures in Great Britain: A dataset.

The spatial distribution of activities and agents within cities, conceptualised as an urban function, profoundly affects how different areas are perceived and lived. This dataset introduces the concept of functional signatures - contiguous areas of a similar urban function delineated based on enclosed tessellation cells (ETC) - and applies it to the area of Great Britain. ETCs are granular spatial units, which capture function based on interpolations from open data inputs stretching from remote sensing to land use, census and points of interest data.

Decomposing the Temporal Signature of Nitrogen Dioxide Declines during the COVID-19 Pandemic in UK Urban Areas.

On March 23, 2020, a national lockdown was imposed in the UK to limit interpersonal contact and the spread of COVID-19. Human mobility patterns were drastically adjusted as individuals complied with stay-at-home orders, changed their working patterns, and moved increasingly in the proximity of their home. Such behavioural changes brought about many spillover impacts, among which the sharp and immediate reduction in the concentration of nitrogen-based pollutants throughout the country.