Introduction

COVID-19, as well as the measures set to stop the spread of the virus, strike urban life at its heart. Indeed, much of what makes urban life attractive thrives on the physical proximity of a diversity of people in densely populated built environments. It then comes as no surprise that the socio-spatial dynamics of this infectious disease have triggered a lively debate on the future of the city. In this chapter, by engaging with several voices in this public and academic debate, we focus on the question of whose city we are talking about when we refer to the post-COVID-19 city, focusing on the highly (sub)urbanized Flemish region and Brussels in Belgium. While there is plenty of evidence emerging that both COVID-19 and the COVID-19 measures, in particular the lockdown, hit the urban population very unequally and that it reproduces and strengthens certain urban inequalities, we argue that in the debate on urban life in the (post-)COVID-19 city a ‘white’ middle-class perspective is often dominant. As a result, the diversity of spatial needs and the varying degrees of spatial poverty are not sufficiently taken into account. We then move on to document the impact of COVID-19, and the measures to counter it, on precarious groups living in the city. Finally, we suggest a few socio-spatial lessons which could be drawn from the lockdown for a more equal post-COVID-19 city.

COVID-19 and the city through the prism of ‘urban flight’

The impact of the lockdown on urban life and the use of urban space was instantaneous. A remarkable feature of several early newspaper articles on COVID-19 and in Flemish cities and Brussels is its framing in terms of ‘urban flight’. In the articles, COVID-19 is framed as a potential new driver of urban flight and thus a threat to the renewed popularity of cities with (a part of) the middle class. One article reports on the ‘anguish of urban life under COVID measures […] with a small balcony or small garden, the playground fenced off with police tape and the parks where you are chased away from sitting on a bench’ (Renson, 2020) and links this to a future acceleration of urban flight of ‘young families’ (read: ‘White’, middle class families).