MOBI-HEALTH: Mobility, Health and Inclusive Urban Epidemic Resilience

COVID19 presents our most serious health threat in over a century. The linkages of this health crisis to mobility are profound and complex. Extensive global mobility has facilitated a global spread of the virus more widely and rapidly than ever before. Yet, in the absence of effective and approved pharmaceutical intervention, unprecedented mobility restrictions have become our prevailing medicine to suppress COVID19 mortality and relieve healthcare demand all around the world. The rapidly changing landscape of epidemic, economic and societal conditions has revealed deep epidemic vulnerabilities in cities that intersect with health, mobility, digital and socioeconomic inequalities. MOBI-HEALTH produces transdisciplinary knowledge on the interdependencies, impacts and inequalities of mobility, digitalisation and health in face of COVID19, to support inclusive urban epidemic resilience. It will do so by drawing on quantitative and qualitative empirical investigations of pre, peri- and postepidemic mobility, digital, health and policy/planning practices and perceptions (several already ongoing given the time-urgency of matters), and with an international comparative design across cases from the greater Oslo, Bergen, Luxembourg and Stockholm areas. The project analyses the effects of the built environment and socio-economic status on epidemic vulnerability in urban neighbourhoods, directly and via its effects on travel responses during confinement. It also addresses people's practices of (digital) mobility and experiences of fear, (dis)trust and wellbeing under confinement, as well as the mid- and long term impacts on sustainable mobility, residential choice and health. The project discusses how the produced knowledge can support the implementation of epidemic resilience in alongside other goals in planning processes towards inclusive and sustainable urban transformation.