The COVID-19 pandemic generated a considerable debate in relation to urban density. This is an old debate, originated in mid 19th century's England with the emergence of public health and urban planning disciplines. While popularly linked, evidence suggests that such relationship cannot be generally assumed. Furthermore, urban density has been investigated in a spatially coarse manner (predominantly at city level) and never contextualised with other descriptors of urban form. In this work, we explore COVID-19 and urban form in Greater London, relating a comprehensive set of morphometric descriptors (including built-up density) to COVID-19 deaths and cases, while controlling for socioeconomic, ethnicity, age, and co-morbidity. We describe urban form at individual building level and then aggregate information for official neighbourhoods, allowing for a detailed intra-urban representation. Results show that: i) control variables significantly explain more variance of both COVID-19 cases and deaths than the morphometric descriptors; ii) of what the latter can explain, built-up density is indeed the most associated, though inversely. The typical London neighbourhood with high levels of COVID-19 infections and deaths resembles a suburb, featuring a low-density urban fabric dotted by larger free-standing buildings and framed by a poorly inter-connected street network.

翻译：COVID-19大流行在城市密度方面引发了相当大的辩论,这是一个古老的辩论,起源于19世纪中叶的英格兰,出现了公共卫生和城市规划学科。虽然与公众密切相关,但证据表明这种关系不能被普遍假定。此外,城市密度是以空间粗糙的方式(主要在城市一级)调查的,从未与城市形式的其他描述者联系。在这项工作中,我们探索COVID-19和大伦敦的城市形式,涉及一套全面的COVID-19死亡和案例(包括累积密度),同时控制社会经济、族裔、年龄和共同发病率。我们描述的是个人建筑一级的城市形式,然后是官方居民区的综合信息,允许详细的城市内代表性。结果显示:(一) 控制变量可以大大解释COVID-19案件和死亡的差别大于光度描述的描述者;二) 后者可以解释的是,建造的密度确实是最相关联的,尽管是相反的,同时控制着社会经济、族裔、年龄和共同死亡率。我们描述的是,典型的伦敦居民区在单个建筑一级,由高程度的CVI-19型的市际网络构成的低程度和低程度的市际感染和低程度的都市间网络。