In this commentary, we trace the economic and spatial consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of potential business failure and the associated job losses across the 100 largest cities and towns in the United Kingdom (UK). The article draws on UK survey data of 1500 firms of different size classes examining levels of firm-level precautionary savings. On business failure risk, we find a clear and unequal impact on poorer northern and peripheral urban areas of the UK, indicative of weak levels of regional resilience, but a more random distribution in terms of job losses. Micro firms and the largest firms are the greatest drivers of aggregate job losses. We argue that spatially blind enterprise policies are insufficient to tackle the crisis and better targeted regional policies will be paramount in the future to help mitigate the scarring effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of firm failures and the attendant job losses. We conclude that Covid-19 has made the stated intention of the current government’s ambition to ‘level up’ the forgotten and left-behind towns and cities of the UK an even more distant policy objective than prior to the crisis.

在这篇评论中，我们从英国（UK）的100个最大城镇中潜在的企业倒闭以及相关的工作损失的角度，追踪了Covid-19大流行的经济和空间后果。本文借鉴了英国1500家不同规模类别的公司的调查数据，以检查公司级预防性储蓄的水平。在业务失败风险方面，我们发现对英国北部和外围城市地区的贫困地区存在明显且不平等的影响，这表明区域抵御能力水平较弱，但就工作损失而言，分布较为随机。微型公司和最大的公司是总失业的最大驱动力。我们认为，空间盲目的企业政策不足以应对危机，而针对性更强的区域政策在未来将至关重要，以帮助缓解Covid-19大流行在企业倒闭和随之而来的工作损失方面的疤痕效应。我们得出的结论是，Covid-19使现任政府雄心勃勃地表达了其意图，即“升级”英国被遗忘和遗留的城镇，这比危机前的政策目标更加遥远。