Rescaling of urban policy in response to COVID-19 (post)pandemic crisis. The case of the divided towns in the Polish-German-Czech borderland

The COVID-19 pandemic is important as it "paralyzes", in an unprecedented and unexplored scale, not only the cross-boder cooperation, but also urban policy defined as a complex of activities conducted by municipal governments and targeted at meeting the needs of residents. Therefore due to the COVID-19 pandemic many areas of urban policy (e.g. health care, social care, labor market, housing, education, culture, recreation, transport, etc.) fall into an organizational and financial crisis. The main aim of the paper is to conduct an in-depth, multi-factor analysis and diagnosis of the processes of the rescaling of urban policy in response COVID-19 (post)pandemic crisis. The paper focuses on ten divided towns in the cross-border areas: Słubice/Frankfurt an der Oder, Gubin/Guben, Łęknica/Bad Muskau, Zgorzelec/Görlitz (the Polish-German borderland) and Cieszyn/Český Těšín (the Polish-Czech borderland). For the needs of the paper, the following research hypothesis was formulated: the rescaling of the urban policy in response to COVID-19 (post)pandemic crisis is an effective instrument to counteract the destructive effects of this crisis which is both spatial and subjective in nature. The paper will allow to create the overall theory explaining the role of rescaling of urban policy in the conditions of the crisis of municipal governance, namely in the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the COVID-19 post-pandemic period. The rescaling of urban policy is defined through the prism of the actions of municipal self-government administration which are undertaken on scales considered traditionally non-urban (on an inward, eg. district, cross-border and transnational scale) and in cooperation with private and non-governmental entities (cf. Brenner 2004, 2019; Jessop 2007; Swyngedouw 1997, 2000). In this sense, the effectiveness of counteracting the destructive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is defined by the implementation of public tasks and meeting the collective needs of residents in the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the COVID-19 post-pandemic period. The COVID-19 pandemic period is understood as a period in which the governments of the surveyed countries introduce various types of restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. In turn, the COVID-19 post-pandemic period is a period in which restrictions do not apply. In connection with the hypothesis, three research questions were formulated. Firstly, in what areas of urban policy are the destructive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic managed, and in which is this not possible? In which areas of urban policy is scaling particularly necessary, desirable and effective? Secondly, which scale (inward, eg. district, municipal, cross-border, transnational) turns out to be the most important for counteracting the destructive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, both during the pandemic and post-pandemic period? Thirdly, how does counteracting the destructive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic affect cross-boder cooperation? The analysis is based on the use of the set of research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, namely: comparative analysis, content analysis, decision analysis as well as expert interviews, structured interviews and focus group interviews.