  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.
