Assessing the Impact of Spatial Planning on the Spread of COVID-19 within Kampala City
Abstract
Spatial planning has previously had an impact on the dynamics of pandemics however its influence on the spread of COVID-19 has not been explored. This research, therefore, focused on assessing the impact of spatial planning on the spread of COVID-19 in Kampala City. This was done based on the confirmed COVID-19 cases registered between 21st March 2020 and 27th March 2021 in conjunction with spatial analytical methods of the Global Moran’s Index, Anselin’s Local Indicator of Spatial Associating (LISA) and the Geographically Weighted Regression model (GWR). The Global Moran’s I and Anselin’s LISA were used to determine the spatial distribution of COVID-19 cases. The GWR was used to model the relationship between conformance to spatial planning and the spatial distribution of COVID cases. Results attained through these methods show a random distribution of cases with LISA results indicating parishes located in the Central Division as major disease risk sites of COVID-19. Furthermore, results from the GWR revealed a negative relationship between spatial planning and the spatial distribution of Covid-19 with an R2 value of 0.51. Meaning that spatial planning could explain 51 per cent of the variations in Covid-19 cases in Kampala City. Therefore, in order to change Kampala into a pandemic resilient City, there is a need to develop appropriate compact spatial planning designs especially in parishes of Nakasero 1, Nakasero 11 and Nakasero III and Kagugube.
Keywords: Covid-19; Spatial Planning; Spatial Distribution