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This article analyzes some relevant questions as regards the impact of COVID-19-related social living conditions on spatial planning policies and practices. The proposed discussion aims at highlighting and discussing a number of outstanding topics of spatial planning which public administrative bodies, practitioners, entrepreneurs and organizations operating in the profit and non-profit sectors, and the local communities should carefully consider with reference to a new planning outset after the lockdown period. Innovative and creative approaches should be identified and implemented when dealing with collective public spaces, shopping malls, retail activities and related areas, urban and regional mobility-related infrastructure and services, food-supply changes and their implications in terms of development of local food-producing practices, spatial social control and privacy, mitigation of climate change-related negative impacts, and public awareness and commitment towards losers, especially urban losers. Each of these points presents important challenges for the future of spatial planning. Some of these challenges are synthetically described and discussed in this article. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 2020: Special Issue. Covid-19 vs City-20

The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to lead to a critical reconsideration of the global volume growth model for tourism, for reasons related to the risks posed by global travel and the contribution of the tourism industry to global pollution, climate change and, more in general, the socio-cultural instability of certain geographical areas of the world. Nevertheless, it is possible to propose a different point of view by trying to accept this historical moment as an occasion to ponder over the need for a change in the unsustainability of the present lifestyles. Tourism in this can be a driver function to support this transition by giving to tourism flows a higher sense. Tourist destinations will have to change but how and how many tourist cities will be able to re-calibrate their supply system of services and facilities to host the "new tourists"? Could the on-demand model be a new way for tourists to enjoy their experience? The paper, trying to give answers to these questions, proposes some reflections about the inevitable change imposed by the pandemic, aiming at outlining the possible scenarios that will characterize the tourism-city relationship in the next future and paying attention to the social aspects. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 2020: Special Issue. Covid-19 vs City-20

Starting from the relationship between urban planning and mobility management, TeMA has gradually expanded the view of the covered topics, always following a rigorous scientific in-depth analysis. This section of the Journal, Review Notes, is the expression of a continuous updating of emerging topics concerning relationships among urban planning, mobility and environment, through a collection of short scientific papers. The Review Notes are made of four parts. Each section examines a specific aspect of the broader information storage within the main interests of TeMA Journal. In particular, the Urban practices section aims at presenting recent advancements on relevant topics that underlie the challenges that the cities have to face. The present note provides an overview of the policies and initiatives undertaken in three North American cities in response to the Covid-19 outbreak: New York City (US), Mexico City (MX) and Montreal (CA). A cross-city analysis is used to derive a taxonomy of urban policy measures. The contribution discusses the effectiveness of each measures in providing answers to epidemic threats in urban areas while, at the same time, improving the sustainability and resilience of urban communities. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 14 No 1 (2021): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices

Since early spring 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 in Italy caused schools and universities to lock and shift from traditional face-to-face classroom education to online education. In the academic field of spatial planning, online education and examples of on-line participatory process (e.g. e-planning, e-governance, etc.) are traditionally not very frequent. Through the application of an on-line participatory process to build a future vision of Bari (Apulia Region), this study explores elements related to the behavior of the knowledge agents involved in the process and compares them with the application of previous face-to-face classroom examples. The results obtained allow to collect some suggestions not only on the performance of the application in two different times, but also on the potential elements of difference to be associated to the temporal and psychological context related to the diffusion of COVID-19. Since these conditions are clearly exceptional and practically (hopefully) unrepeatable, the results seem to show a mixed perspective of effectiveness for the use of online education to build a future vision of a city. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 13 No 2 (2020): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, Tools and Best Practices

Decisions regarding land use are amongst the most important decisions of a city planning process, and density arrangement is one of the key parameters for it. The effects of urban density on the Covid-19 infection are evaluated in this study through the sample case of İskenderun district, which was divided into 3 main urban population density regions (high, medium, low). The course of the Covid-19 pandemic was then followed through the number of cases in the period of September-December 2020 for these regions. The case data were obtained from the “HES” application developed by the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Turkey to monitor the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the case density maps recorded in the application for this purpose were digitized through an in-house image processing software. As a result of the examination, it was understood that the rate of increase and the density of cases in regions with high housing density was higher than that of regions with lower densities, with PI (Pandemic Index) values of 173.83 and 39.40 for high and low densities, respectively. The results are indicative that the lack of urban land production and high population concentration, which have become important problems of developing countries and regions due to rapid population growth, are indeed strong factors for the spread of diseases, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 14 No 2 (2121): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices

The Covid-19 pandemic event can activate a comprehensive reflection on the change of development models, overcoming the current unsustainable ones. Present events in Italy are mainly affecting Northern Regions but also the Southern ones will suffer from economic consequences, related to the pandemic. This is particularly relevant for the marginal areas of the Italian Mezzogiorno. The article highlights issues that are deemed relevant for including inner areas of Italian Southern regions into the process of economic recovery after the pandemic, in order to avoid the deepening of the long lasting North South imbalance, in the light of the growing depopulation of this part of the Country. The focus is on the role of Health Services, Education, Built up Environment and Transports, systems considered as key elements for promoting a well-balanced use of existing territorial assets. The real challenge is to reverse this terrible threat into an opportunity, introducing effective changes into the way we waste our limited planetary resources, especially the territorial ones. In this direction, Southern regions can play a fundamental role for increasing the resilience of the entire nation. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 2020: Special Issue. Covid-19 vs City-20

The coronavirus pandemic has affected over 200 countries worldwide, finding an environment well-suited to its spread in cities as the heart of our civilization, as the meeting place for ideas, cultures and commercial exchanges. In these circumstances, prevention and control play a vital role, revealing the need to improve the current knowledge of users’ perception of urban spaces and the way in which spaces are perceived and used. This work aims at investigating how the coronavirus emergency influenced perception of the surrounding spaces. In this regard, two questionnaire-based surveys were carried out on a sample of students from the School of Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Bari (Italy), one during the lockdown phase and one immediately after. Even after only a preliminary analysis, results showed some interesting patterns. They revealed, on the one hand, the expectations regarding possible changes, indicating places that are particularly important or symbolic for participants, and which are perceived to be missing, and on the other, the feelings of fear, worry and uncertainty with regard to the risk of contagion during post-lockdown access to and navigation through them. Nonetheless, some changes were considered positive, thus providing a strong indication of the expectations placed on future cities TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 2020: Special Issue. Covid-19 vs City-20

The global Covid-19 pandemic has changed individuals, uses and perceptions of spaces and cities. The current debate in Urban Planning is animated by the themes of proximity, public space and accessibility to essential urban functions. The functioning of the contemporary city has definitely exploded, showing its shortcomings and underlining the need to interpret it as a fragmentable and self-sufficient entity in case of emergency. The new urban models and approaches adopted seek to respond to this by reallocating essential urban functions and eco-systemic connections so that the urban and peri-urban cooperate to initiate a process of socio-economic development. The idea of a multi-polar system marked by the metric of time of use is pursued. The centrality evolves from the geographical concept to the directional one, becoming infrastructural and cognitive to increase the liveability of the urban space. The aim of the paper is to evaluate how urban transformations, through the analysis of best practices and scientific literature, can be elements in support of the proximity city and how transformative placemaking can be part of the strategy. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 14 No 3 (2021): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices

Mobility scooters have evolved up to modern cabin versions and to application of still futuristic solutions in the automotive sector: they could even be a resource for individual mobility in the Covid-19 era, but in Italy they seem unable to establish, mainly because of lacking and approximate legislation. Article 46 of the Italian Highway Code generically delegates the definition of ���machines for disabled persons��� (not considered vehicles) to ���current Community provisions���, but the explanatory note of heading 8713 of EU Combined Nomenclature of goods and EU Regulations 718/2009 and 2021/1367 equate mobility scooters to motor vehicles: as such they are an unknown entity for the Highway Code, therefore they should be considered unregulated atypical vehicles, which are forbidden in public areas. We propose the classification of mobility scooters as ���motor vehicles��� for both able and disabled persons and a specific regulation of their characteristics and circulation. Our legislative proposal could be useful even outside Italy, since some disputes at the European and National Courts and the absence of mobility scooters among the three-wheel vehicles and quadricycles categorized by EU Regulation 168/2013 are a symptom that they are still a controversial topic even abroad and need a clear-cut national and international legislation. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, Vol 14 No 3 (2021): The city challenges and external agents. Methods, tools and best practices

The first cases of COVID-19 occurred in the winter of 2020 in Wuhan-China. The distinctiveness of the new pandemic is that it has occurred in ‘20th century megacities, cities with a large population who use the city as their second home during the day to commute to work, socialize & etc. After the emergence of COVID-19 in February 2020 in Iran, and its capital city, Tehran, new restrictions and rules were put on the way citizens of Tehran were to use their city and its public spaces. These restrictions limit the use of these spaces to a great extent and it seems like these new limitations are here to stay for an unpredictable amount of time until a new medicine or vaccine is found. The main questions here are: How can the threat of this new pandemic in cities be reduced and controlled in the future ? And how can urban spaces be used from now on? In this paper, the new ways people are using the city in Tehran after arrival of the pandemic have been studied and suggestions for guaranteeing the safety of urban spaces from now on have been discussed. TeMA - Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment, 2020: Special Issue. Covid-19 vs City-20