# Cities and contagion

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2020-04-28

agglomeration-economies, cities-and-contagion, covid-19, jessie-handbury, pandemic, penn-iur, richard-voith, susan-wachter, university-of-pennsylvania, upenn, urbanism

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/4185c5d49f93f4a51f71fb195137f896.jpg)

The Penn Institute for Urban Research has just launched a new initiative called, [Cities and Contagion: Lessons from COVID-19](https://penniur.upenn.edu/initiatives/cities-and-contagion-lessons-from-covid-19/). The inaugural piece is a special edition of its _Urban Link_ publication. But going forward, the initiative is planned to include not only publications, but a resource library, convenings (online and offline, when appropriate), and research projects. The objective is to bring together experts from different disciplines to discuss the impacts of this pandemic on cities, as well as the possible responses going forward. You can find the first set of articles, [here](https://penniur.upenn.edu/publications/cities-and-contagion-lessons-from-covid-19/). Some of the contributions include, "[Agglomeration economies are not going away](https://penniur.upenn.edu/publications/agglomeration-economies-are-not-going-away/)" (Jessie Handbury) and, "[There's no substitute for cities](https://penniur.upenn.edu/publications/theres-no-substitute-for-cities/)" (Richard Voith and Susan Wachter). The titles alone should give you a taste of what you can expect from this first publication.

_Photo by_ [_Patrick Mueller_](https://unsplash.com/@pietyo?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) _on_ [_Unsplash_](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/cities-and-contagion)*