Pandemic Disaster Utopia: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Perceptions and Uses of Neighborhood Space in the Bay Area

Although much of American society has moved beyond the isolation stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lingering effects can still be felt. While the immediate impact of COVID-19 isolation is well documented, urban sociologists are beginning to study the longer-term effects of this period on people’s behavior. Considering the impact pandemic lockdowns had on limiting mobility, the rise in remote work, and other alterations in spatial behavior, this thesis poses the question: what was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people's perceptions of their neighborhood? Eleven 1-hour in-depth interviews and cognitive mapping exercises were conducted with residents of the adjacent San Francisco neighborhoods of Glen Park and Excelsior and Redwood City neighborhoods of Farm Hill and Central. This thesis treats the COVID-19 pandemic, as a case study of a disaster, and asks how it affected residents’ use and perception of neighborhood space. Studying a pandemic can advance our understanding of the interaction between the built environment and well-being by shedding light on the complexity of this relationship under different circumstances. Due to the pandemic, Bay Area residents developed deeper place attachments with their neighborhoods, leading them to use public spaces in their neighborhood more. This thesis argues that the pandemic did not have a radical affect on how people use public space. While the pandemic led people to use public space more, Bay Area residents’ fundamental purposes for using public space stayed the sam