Editorial: The Geography of the COVID‐19 Pandemic

Abstract

Much to the liking of many geographers, Forbes Magazine’s contributor and professor in meteorology at the University of Georgia, J. Marshall Shepherd, wrote in early March 2020 an op‐ed titled ‘Why Geography is a key part of fighting the COVID‐19 Coronavirus outbreak’. In Wired, David Wolman (2020) wrote how the pandemic is redefining our relationship with space in a contribution titled ‘Amid a Pandemic, Geography Returns with a Vengeance’. Notwithstanding the many challenges that the Covid‐19 pandemic poses, both in our private lives and in our professional activities, it offers a great opportunity for analysis through a geographic lens. Geographical knowledge and geospatial data, perhaps best exemplified by the widely used Johns Hopkins University COVID‐19 tracking website, have already proven to be vital for understanding the pandemic’s reach. The uneven distribution of the virus across and within countries raises inherently geographic questions regarding the political, economic, financial, socio‐cultural and demographic dimensions of the pandemic. The aim of this special issue of Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (TESG) is to present the initial investigations of geographers and socio‐spatial scientists into the emerging spaces of the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Following a call, we have received well over 40 papers, thereby exceeding our expectations. After internal and external review of the papers we here present the papers that were selected for publication. We are thankful to the reviewers who provided fast, yet detailed, feedback on the papers. In addition, we would like to thank Grace Ong, Senior Journals Publishing Editor at Wiley, and Noel Valdivia, Production Editor, for their support in the publication of this special issue. The papers in this special issue present an interesting geographical mix (with case studies from Asia, Europe and the North America) as well as a variety of methodological approaches towards understanding the spatial manifestations and variegated geographic impact of the pandemic. Furthermore, they well represent the different thematic fields in geography. The editors of TESG welcome more papers on the consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic, which we will have reviewed as we do with any other paper. We will not be able to fast‐track new submissions but we will publish new papers online in ‘Early View’ soon after they have been accepted for publication. Future papers on COVID‐19 will also be added to a Virtual Special Issue, which will consist of all papers published in this issue together with new papers on the geography of the pandemic. As much as possible we aim for the open access publication of these papers. The papers in this special issue are grouped by theme and in the remainder of this editorial we will briefly introduce these different themes.