The impact of COVID-19 on the economic resilience and spatial vitality of urban commercial cluster

Abstract

The spread of COVID-19 greatly limited physical and economic activities in global cities through increasing fears of infection and government-driven lockdown measures. Accordingly, shopping activities has moved from conventional markets to e-commerce significantly. Urban retails have drastically decreased over the years due to competition from these disruptive influences, yet reaction capacities are known to differ by scale and characteristics. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of commercial clusters with high economic resilience during the pandemic. Specifically, the research focused on how online and in-store sales affected differently to resilience of neighbourhood- and district-level urban commercial clusters in 2019 and 2020. Using panel vector auto-regressive modelling, the study explored the interrelationship between online and in-store by districts’ characteristics. For the research, credit card payment data in F&B sector, floating population, and the number of coronavirus confirmed cases data in Seoul, Korea was used to evaluate the vitality of the commercial clusters. Findings suggest that neighbourhood-level commercial cluster would be more resilient and expected to recover in sales more quickly. This indicates that commercial clusters would be more resilient if had steady populations, low rent loads, and were able to accommodate online shopping.