Urban Regions Under Stress: The Case of Madrid After the Lockdown

Resumen

Urban density, mobility, and revenue disparity are relevant factors in terms of urban analysis and project. The COVID-19 pandemic declared in March 2020 has meant a stress test for urban regions, as the alteration of mobility patterns led to changes in social dynamics. This paper investigates the correlations between the evolution of the disease and these three factors. The analysis focuses on the Madrid Urban Region, in Spain, and uses open data available from cadastral, census, and health-related official websites. This use of public information also provides a test on how such inputs could fit in a regional digital twin and can help replication. The analysis shows that overall, the basic structure of regional urban centralities, those with more people at day than at night, keeps stable in the central city and relevant economic areas. There are signs of temporary relocations to low-density areas, to holiday homes, which decreased in 2021. And there is no mathematical correlation between density and disease at the end of the period; figures show, however, of significative correlation during the initial stages, so density, at the household level (housing overcrowding) more than at the neighborhood level (dwellings per hectare), appears as an initial driver for disease expansion whose influence has been dampened progressively over time.