Rowe Francisco, Calafiore Alessia, Arribas-Bel Daniel, Samardzhiev Krasen, Fleischmann Martin
Department of Geography and Planning University of Liverpool Liverpool UK.
Edinburgh College of Art University of Edinburgh Edinburgh Scotland UK.
Popul Space Place. 2023 Jan;29(1):e2637. doi: 10.1002/psp.2637. Epub 2022 Dec 7.
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. Yet, these claims have not been empirically assessed. Traditional data sources, such as censuses offer coarse temporal frequency to analyse population movement over infrequent time intervals. Drawing on a data set of 21 million observations from Meta-Facebook users, we aim to analyse the extent and evolution of changes in the spatial patterns of population movement across the rural-urban continuum in Britain over an 18-month period from March 2020 to August 2021. Our findings show an overall and sustained decline in population movement during periods of high stringency measures, with the most densely populated areas reporting the largest reductions. During these periods, we also find evidence of higher-than-average mobility from high-density population areas to low-density areas, lending some support to claims of large-scale population movements from large cities. Yet, we show that these trends were temporary. Overall mobility levels trended back to precoronavirus levels after the easing of nonpharmaceutical interventions. Following these interventions, we found a reduction in movement to low-density areas and a rise in mobility to high-density agglomerations. Overall, these findings reveal that while COVID-19 generated shock waves leading to temporary changes in the patterns of population movement in Britain, the resulting vibrations have not significantly reshaped the prevalent structures in the national pattern of population movement. As of 2021, internal population movements sit at an intermediate level between those observed pre- and early phases of the pandemic.
现有的实证研究主要集中在评估非药物干预措施对人员流动的有效性，以遏制新冠疫情的传播。对于新冠疫情如何重塑各国国内人口流动的空间模式，我们了解得较少。在疫情早期，西方社会出现了从大城市向农村地区的城市人口外流的传闻证据。然而，这些说法尚未得到实证评估。传统数据源，如人口普查，提供的时间频率较粗，难以分析不频繁时间间隔内的人口流动情况。利用来自Meta-Facebook用户的2100万条观测数据集，我们旨在分析2020年3月至2021年8月这18个月期间，英国城乡连续体中人口流动空间模式变化的程度和演变。我们的研究结果表明，在严格措施实施期间，人口流动总体持续下降，人口最密集地区的降幅最大。在这些时期，我们还发现有证据表明，从高密度人口地区到低密度地区的流动性高于平均水平，这为大城市大规模人口流动的说法提供了一些支持。然而，我们表明这些趋势是暂时的。在非药物干预措施放宽后，总体流动水平趋于回到新冠疫情前的水平。在这些干预措施之后，我们发现流向低密度地区的流动减少，而流向高密度集聚区的流动增加。总体而言，这些研究结果表明，虽然新冠疫情产生了冲击波，导致英国人口流动模式出现暂时变化，但由此产生的波动并未显著重塑全国人口流动模式中的普遍结构。截至2021年，国内人口流动处于疫情前和疫情早期观测到的水平之间的中间水平。
