Urban Exodus? Understanding Human Mobility in Britain During the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Facebook Data
Francisco Rowe, Alessia Calafiore, Daniel Arribas-Bel, Krasen, Samardzhiev, Martin Fleischmann

TL;DR
This study uses Facebook data to analyze how COVID-19 affected human mobility in Britain, revealing temporary shifts towards rural areas during lockdowns that reverted after restrictions eased.
Contribution
It provides empirical evidence on the short-term impact of COVID-19 on population movement patterns within Britain using large-scale social media data.
Findings
Mobility declined during strict lockdowns, especially in dense areas.
Temporary increase in movement from cities to rural areas during restrictions.
Post-lockdown mobility patterns largely returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Abstract
Existing empirical work has focused on assessing the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions on human mobility to contain the spread of COVID-19. Less is known about the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the spatial patterns of population movement within countries. Anecdotal evidence of an urban exodus from large cities to rural areas emerged during early phases of the pandemic across western societies. Yet, these claims have not been empirically assessed. Traditional data sources, such as censuses offer coarse temporal frequency to analyse population movement over short-time intervals. Drawing on a data set of 21 million observations from Facebook users, we aim to analyse the extent and evolution of changes in the spatial patterns of population movement across the rural-urban continuum in Britain over an 18-month period from March, 2020 to August, 2021. Our…
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Taxonomy
TopicsCOVID-19 epidemiological studies · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies · Urban Transport and Accessibility
