Critical Commentary: Cities in a post-COVID world.

This paper examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic, fiscal, social and political fallout on cities and metropolitan regions. We assess the effect of the pandemic on urban economic geography at the intra- and inter-regional geographic scales in the context of four main forces: the social scarring instilled by the pandemic; the lockdown as a forced experiment; the need to secure the urban built environment against future risks; and changes in the urban form and system. At the macrogeographic scale, we argue the pandemic is unlikely to significantly alter the winner-take-all economic geography and spatial inequality of the global city system.

Uncooperative society, uncooperative politics or both? Trust, polarization, populism and COVID-19 deaths across European regions.

Why have some territories performed better than others in the fight against COVID-19? This paper uses a novel dataset on excess mortality, trust and political polarization for 165 European regions to explore the role of social and political divisions in the remarkable regional differences in excess mortality during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we investigate whether regions characterized by a low social and political trust witnessed a higher excess mortality. Second, we argue that it is not only levels, but also polarization in trust among citizens - in particular, between government supporters and non-supporters - that matters for understanding why people in some regions have adopted more pro-healthy behaviour.

Institutions and the uneven geography of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper examines the uneven geography of COVID-19-related excess mortality during the first wave of the pandemic in Europe, before assessing the factors behind the geographical differences in impact. The analysis of 206 regions across 23 European countries reveals a distinct COVID-19 geography. Excess deaths were concentrated in a limited number of regions-expected deaths exceeded 20% in just 16 regions-with more than 40% of the regions considered experiencing no excess mortality during the first 6 months of 2020.

Trading with richer and poorer countries: trade integration and regional inequality in Greece.

This paper examines the link between increased trade and regional GDP growth across the regional income distribution in Greece during the post-EMU period (2000-2013). By means of quantile regression techniques, panel fixed effects and system generalized method of moments (GMM), we disentangle the effects of EU trade-trading with generally richer countries-versus global trade-in the case of Greece, mostly trading with poorer countries-at several points of the regional income distribution to identify differences in trade elasticities. The analysis finds that the impact of EU trade is highly heterogeneous and mainly affects negatively the economy of the richer regions in Greece.

Does Population Diversity Matter for Economic Development in the Very Long Term? Historic Migration, Diversity and County Wealth in the US.

Does population diversity matter for economic development in the long run? Is there a different impact of diversity across time? This paper traces the short-, medium- and long-term economic impact of population diversity resulting from the big migration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the United States (US). Using census data from 1880, 1900 and 1910, the settlement pattern of migrants across the counties of the 48 US continental states is tracked in order to construct measures of population fractionalization and polarization at county level. Factors which may have influenced both the individual settlement decision at the time of migration and county-level economic development in recent years are controlled for.

A blueprint for strategic urban research: the .

Urban research in many countries has failed to keep up with the pace of rapidly and constantly evolving urban change. The growth of cities, the increasing complexity of their functions and the complex intra- and inter-urban linkages in this 'urban century' demand new approaches to urban analysis, which, from a systemic perspective, supersede the existing fragmentation in urban studies. In this paper we propose the concept of the as a framework in order to address some of the inefficiencies associated with current urban analysis.

Organizing product innovation: hierarchy, market or triple-helix networks?

This paper assesses the extent to which the organization of the innovation effort in firms, as well as the geographical scale at which this effort is pursued, affects the capacity to benefit from product innovations. Three alternative modes of organization are studied: hierarchy, market and triple-helix-type networks. Furthermore, we consider triple-helix networks at three geographical scales: local, national and international.