The Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning

Research Project: Impacts of the COVID-19 crisis in border regions

Project briefing

  • Status Completed
  • Project duration July 2021 – November 2022
  • Programme MORO

This project is to contribute to the spatial differentiation of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by identifying its possible consequences of in German border regions and, as far as possible, describing them quantitatively. In the Franco-German border area, the French regions are included in a more detailed analysis.

Background

Since the first few months of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has massively influenced and changed almost all areas of human life. Not only did the health risk change our direct behaviour, the scope and the way we do business, work, live, commute, are mobile, learn, maintain social relationships, communicate, consume, spend leisure time or travel has changed massively.

The long-term development and effects of many of the consequences of the pandemic are still not foreseeable. But the consequences are becoming increasingly tangible and also quantifiable, particularly at the macro level.

At the regional level, the effects of the pandemic, with incidences and COVID-19-related deaths reported for districts and cities, are all too familiar to the population. However, the social and economic consequences differentiated up to now have not been very systematically recorded and analysed. The regional dimension of the wider consequences of the pandemic often remains at the level of reports on individual cases and anecdotes. This also applies in particular to the border areas between Germany and neighbouring countries.

Objective

This project aimed to contribute to a spatial differentiation of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The focus is on the border regions to Germany's nine neighbouring countries. For this type of region, which may be particularly affected, there still was a lack of evidence on the consequences of the pandemic and associated measures.

The aim of this study was to identify the possible consequences of the crisis in the border regions and, as far as possible, to describe them quantitatively. For this purpose, the German regions at all external borders of the Federal Republic were to be analysed. In the French-German border area, the French regions were to be included in a more detailed analysis.

The contractor of the research study was Spiekermann & Wegener, Urban and Regional Research (S&W), Dortmund in cooperation with agl | Hartz • Saad • Wendl - Landschafts-, Stadt- und Raumplanung, Saarbrücken.

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Contact us

  • Claire Duvernet
    Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development
    Division RS 3 "European Spatial and Urban Development"
    Phone: +49 228 99401-2328
    Email: claire.duvernet@bbr.bund.de

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