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There are three key things to note in this: Looking between late-February and mid-March, we see that the drop-off in footfall happened earlier and was much sharper in London than the other cities. Looking between early-April and mid-June, we see that the small and the medium-sized cities experienced less of a decline than London and the other large cities, and they also started to recover from this earlier. Looking between mid-June (when non-essential retail reopened) and Saturday 4 July, we see that while the trajectory is upwards everywhere, the small and the medium-sized cities have seen a much sharper climb back up towards normal.

There are three things potentially playing into this: City centres of large cities tend to have less residential and industrial space and are often concentrations of office jobs, which have been and still are being done from home. This limits how many workers are in the city centre compared to before.  Larger cities, especially London are more reliant on public transport than their smaller counterparts. With public transport still limited in both capacity and use for public health reasons, it is now harder for people to travel into the centres of these cities. Due to their size, larger cities have more options for going to the pub or shopping beyond the centre and it may be that this has further reduced footfall in the city centre.

This and our other analysis on the topic suggests that we are unlikely to see large-scale changes in footfall and a ‘return to the normal’ in the city centres of the largest cities until office workers are welcome to and do return. 

A new map from the developer Meli Harvey shows exactly how narrow the sidewalks in New York are, with colors overlaid onto the city’s grid. (Harvey used data from New York City’s sidewalk dataset to construct their map.) The result is a stark validation of what most New Yorkers felt to be true: there’s just not enough space for most people to stay the recommended six feet apart.

The government has already boasted that millions of citizens have shared this information with them at a time when most Iranians are completely in the dark about the threat from coronavirus. The government is being accused of covering up the real infection and death rates with experts claiming the real figures are exponentially higher. With confusion and fear gripping many parts of Iran, this app is looking to take advantage of that to boost Tehran's surveillance capabilities.

It is impossible to say how many of Iran’s citizens have downloaded the app, but according to this tweet from the ICT minister MJ Azari Jahromi, at least 3.5 million people have now shared their precise location and intimate details with the government.

“The regime’s attitude is evident during the coronavirus crisis,” Gobadi said. “Instead of being transparent and alerting the public regarding the real scope of the crisis, the regime has resorted to a massive campaign of deception and concealment particularly as it pertains to the number of victims and fatalities.”