Mapping the Epidemic: A Systemic Geography of COVID-19 in Italy

This book analyzes contagion trends and the spread of Covid-19 in Italy in relation toterritorial features with a focus on the region of Lombardy, which was the most severelyaffected. Research began in February 2020, as a group of researchers from the Universityof Bergamo began monitoring in Italy the first epidemic “wave” of viral infection comingfrom China, which subsequently spread to Europe and the entire world. Monitoring ceasedat the end of June, when the epidemic entered an endemic phase and lockdown measuresadopted to contain it were finally lifted.This initial intense period of health emergency in Italy is crucially important for sheddinglight on the epidemiological dynamics of the disease, for pinpointing potential flaws in ourpattern of urban living in times of Covid-19, and, finally, for assessing measures that were putin place in an attempt to stem infection and safeguard the functioning of the health-care system.As also witnessed at present, subsequent Covid-19 waves provide datasets that differfrom first-wave data, since infection monitoring has by now extended to increasingly largerpopulation groups, which also include asymptomatic people.a Furthermore, later epidemicwaves depend on containment and tracing measures that were adopted as well as on citizens’acceptance of restrictions over individual freedoms: all that makes it difficult for researchersto examine contagion dynamics in relation to socioterritorial features.This study should be placed in the context of social research that developed in the courseof 2020 alongside biomedical studies, and it is rooted in the influential claims of one ofthe famous 19th-century progenitors of German pathology, Rudolf Virchow, who stated,“An epidemic is a social phenomenon that involves some medical aspects.”b In addition,our research is not so much and not merely an account of the first viral wave that swept acrossEurope. Rather, it is a territory-focused reflection on a complex issue, an investigation theultimate goal of which is to derive useful guidelines on how to defend ourselves fromsubsequent Covid-19 waves or subsequent pandemics.cThe initial purpose of this research was to answer the question, “Why in Bergamo?,” that is,to investigate why the contagion spread with such unparalleled virulence and gravity in the province of Bergamo, and later affected much of the region to which this territory belongs,that is, Lombardy.In order to pursue this goal, besides official infection data made available by the Ministry ofHealth, we relied on a “toolbox,” which included datasets produced over the years on thesocioterritorial aspects of the region and used cartographic and geographic equipmentfrom the CST-DiathesisLab to visualize data and translate datasets into information.dHowever, we soon came to the realization that we needed to formulate a clear startinghypothesis and to lay out a solid theoretical framework on which our analytical researchmethod could be based. Our hypothesis eventually focused on the existence of a relationshipbetween epidemiological features and physical and social aspects of places. Thus, weembraced the notion that territory affects contagion and that territorial features impinge on theonset, course, intensity, and severity of contagion. This involved assuming territory not exclusivelyin its localized dimensions, but rather in relation to its physical and/or social features.In order to address the territorial phenomena of globalization, we needed to adopt a theoreticalmodel, and the reticularity model seemed particularly apposite. A reticular modelsuccinctly states that in the contemporary, mobile and urbanized world, living unfolds along theintertwining nodes and connections produced by the dynamism of inhabitants both locally and globally(L!evy, 2008). Unsurprisingly, in times of a pandemic, reticularity of this kind marks idealconditions for a viral spread. Under such conditions, a contagion will occur both by proximity,which results from gatherings or crowding around high-connectivity places, such ashyperplaces (public spaces typical of high population density), and by reticularity, whichderives from people’s movements on collective public transport (Lussault, 2007, 2017).