A year into the pandemic: shifts, improvisations and impacts for places, people and policy

The catalyst for this book emerged in late 2019 with the first reports of a
‘mystery pneumonia’ taking hold in the Chinese city of Wuhan (Horton,
2020). This virus was confirmed by authorities as a new type of Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS) and given the acronym COVID-19
(‘co’ for corona, ‘vi’ for virus and ‘d’ for disease and ’19 for the year in
which it was identified). For more than a year the pandemic that followed
has transformed the everyday experiences of nearly everyone living on Earth
and created significant and often dramatic changes in life trajectories (Žižek,
2020). COVID-19 transformed the relationships between people and place
and challenged politicians and officials to engage in rapid and unprecedented
policy improvisation intended to save lives and reduce the negative impacts
of the pandemic. Some of these transformations will result in permanent alterations
and others will be transitory, while the wider impacts will continue to
emerge for decades to come. This book is published at a time when COVID-19
is still being experienced and the dust has not yet settled. This is intentional.