The Great Lockdown in response to Covid-19 has altered billions of people's perception of geographic space. For weeks, social and professional interactions were mediated by digital technologies that compressed physical distance and blurred the boundaries between the digital world and the real one

Italy's inconclusive general election, with its clear populist drift, will likely lead to a prolonged period of political stalemate, freezing the adoption of much-needed structural reforms. But the deadlock, and the related perception that the country is unwilling to change, might have another ch