Spatiality of Service Delivery in the Covid19 Pandemic: Transcending Spatial Boundaries or Accommodating Logistical Challenges?

ABSTRACT Considerations of ‘place’ and ‘space’ have become common in the literature on public and human services, most importantly in the form of ‘place‐based’ approaches and ‘trusted space’. Whilst these allude to physical spatial reality, either in conjunction with ‘relational spaces’ (‘trusted spaces’) or focussing on one particular ‘place’ (‘place‐based’ approaches), both concepts at the same time entail and transcend considerations of physical spatiality, leaving the specific relationship between individual services (understood as tasks rather than organisations) and physicality (understood as the need for a material presence in physical space), at the margin of current thinking. Whereas an abundant literature examines the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic on organisations, despite the spatial nature of constraints imposed during the pandemic, spatiality as a concept and its impact remains underexplored. This article examines the importance of physical space for delivering person‐centred services. Proposing a distinction between physicality‐bound and not‐physicality‐bound services , this article argues that the relationship between service delivery and physical space shaped opportunities and challenges organisations delivering public services faced as a result of the pandemic. It contributes to the literature empirically and analytically by first complementing empirical findings on service delivery under spatial constraints and second showcasing the analytical value of considering services in a spatial perspective.