Global City Economic Watch 14th April
As large-scale quarantine measures limit the movement of urban populations globally, we are providing a weekly glance at real-time indicators to assess the level of slowdown in economic activity and how quickly cities are beginning to return to normal.
3 minutes to read
In this week’s edition we look at Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Report* across 17 locations and update on the latest Citymapper Mobility Index** and Traffic Index from TomTom International BV***. As the Czech Republic, Austria and Denmark look to lift some restrictions, we also include Prague, Vienna and Copenhagen, where possible, as they will be key cities to monitor.
Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Report analyses how visits and the time spent at different places have changed compared to a baseline. Here we focus on the mobility trends for places of work. The data shows that the largest declines have been for some of the hardest hit areas, notably for Milan and the Lombardy region as well as Madrid, in both case mobility levels have dropped by 65%. Whilst Seoul and Singapore, both of which were not in lockdown at the time of the data recording at the end of March, saw the smallest falls of 12% and 15%.
Revisiting the Citymapper Mobility Index gives us an indication what proportion of a city’s population is moving around compared to normal. Singapore, who introduced stricter measures, closing all non-essential workplaces from 7 April and schools from 8 April, saw mobility levels tumble to 17% on 8 April, from 51% a week earlier. Hong Kong has seen their proportion increase five percentage points in the past week, to 38%, and Vienna, who we will keep a close eye on as some shops start to open next week, has seen a rise of one percentage point to 7%.
For traffic congestion, as measured by TomTom, we have looked specifically at 2 April and 9 April to see the weekly change. This shows again an uptick for Beijing and Shanghai with Beijing seeing congestion of 65%, up from 61% a week ago and above the 2019 average of 63%. Vienna and Berlin saw a rise in congestion levels of five percentage points, to 15% and 22% respectively, yet still sit well below their 2019 levels of 45% and 48%.
We will continue to monitor these and other measures on a frequent basis. These will offer real-time indication as to how quickly society and consumer patterns return to pre-pandemic levels and will serve as a guide on the time that it will take for economic recovery.
Notes on methodology
*Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Report analyses the how visits and time spent at different places change compared to a baseline. The baseline is the median value, for the corresponding day of the week, during the 5- week period Jan 3–Feb 6, 2020
**The Citymapper Mobility Index looks at the percentage of the population moving compared to a recent typical usage period, they do this by comparing trips planned in the Citymapper app to a recent typical usage period as trips planned are correlated to trips taken.
***The congestion level looks at how much longer a trip would take compared to baseline, e.g. a level of 53% means that a 30-minute trip will take 53% more time than it would during baseline uncongested conditions.