Abstract Body

To tackle the Coronavirus pandemic, countries across the world have implemented a range of stringent policies, including stay-at-home ‘lockdowns‘; school and workplace closures; cancellation of events and public gatherings; and restrictions on public transport. These measures were implemented to slow the spread of the virus by enforcing physical distance between people but they have also most likely changed people use of the urban environments. Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports which provide a regularly updated dataset that shows how peoples’ movements have changed throughout the pandemic, offers a great opportunity to investigate how the people mobility and frequentation of urban environments have changed. The reports in fact provide measures of visitor numbers to specific categories of location (e.g. grocery stores; parks; train stations) every day, comparing this change relative to baseline day before the pandemic outbreak. Baseline days represent a normal value for that day of the week, given as median value over the five‑week period from January 3rd to February 6th 2020. Aim of this study is to analyse how the pandemic and the containment measures changed the use of urban locations in Italy with a special attention to urban green spaces. Urban green space is a fundamental element in the urban environment, providing multiple ecosystem services and particularly beneficial effects on physical and mental health. In times of societal crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, these effects may even be amplified. Some studies have already shown how "spending time outdoors" was particularly missed during the COVID-19 isolation, and how urban green spaces were important for providing places of solace and relaxation. Our study results show how the mobility to parks and green spaces have significantly increased during lockdown and how the mobility was strongly influenced by the different types of containment measures and restrictions.