Disease shapes cities. Some of the most relevant developments in urban planning and management, such as mid-19th century sanitation systems, developed in response to public health crises. Now COVID-19 is joining a long list of infectious diseases, like the Spanish flu or the Ebola virus, likely to leave their mark on urban spaces.
Beyond being a “state of exception”, it has also served as a reveal of pre-existing conditions, where the poor planning and broken social systems in which we live in have become explicit. [1]
While this does not attempt to portray a simple solution for such a complex problem (and I wouldn’t promise such thing), it is a reflection on key aspects that could make change when (re)designing cities in a post-COVID world.
“Precisely because they are hubs for transnational commerce and mobility, densely populated and hyper-connected cities can amplify pandemic risk. With estimates that 68% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, the need to design cities well for pandemics will only get more pressing.”
Hong Kong. Architecture of Density. Michael Wolf.
Density:
One of the most pressing questions that urban planners will face is the tension between densification – the push towards cities becoming more concentrated, which is seen as essential to improving environmental sustainability [2] – and disaggregation, the separation of populations, which is one of the key tools currently being used to hold back infection transmission.
“Density is one of the key issues in planning that can regularly create all kinds of misunderstandings and tensions but is an essential driver of our urban futures. We cannot fulfill this future without delving into the specificity of the misunderstandings and tensions.
Most urgently, we need to make clear distinctions between desirable compact urban living, and the other c-word urbanists tend to avoid: crowding. There is a fine yet highly contested line between the two.”
In the future, there will be a renewed focus on finding design solutions for individual buildings and wider neighborhoods that are dense but enable people to socialize without being crowded, packed “sardine-like” into compressed restaurants, bars, and clubs – although, given the high cost of land in big cities like New York and Hong Kong, success here may depend on significant economic reforms as well.
In the meantime, as The New York Times dance critic Gia Kourlas states, the choreography of the streets has taken on higher stakes. We already live in high-density areas, and the way we move through space may be the difference between health and sickness, life, and death. [3]
We see that 2 meters don’t mean the same to everybody, not everybody is as spacially aware, but the public consequences of our movements in public now demand a deep connection to the position and movement of the body (through the sense of proprioception).
Life is precious, and so is movement. And our awareness of it.
“The pandemic has created something fascinating: a new way of moving, a new way of dancing in the streets.
As we find ourselves in a position of cherishing what we’ve always taken for granted, we need to retrain our minds as well as our bodies because right now we’re all dancers, and we need to start acting like it.”
Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. Angelo Vasta.
Transportation:
City governments around the globe are concluding, transit habits will need to change. The role that buses and subway systems play in spreading the disease remains incompletely understood (and controversial), but it is clear that public transit systems risk becoming hot spots for transmission if they get too crowded.
Several European cities are now using the coronavirus crisis to reevaluate its relationship with automobiles (which threaten to become a more popular post-pandemic commuting mode when transit-anxious workers venture back to the office) and to instead put cleaner and greener transport options in place, reallocating street space from cars to expand bike and pedestrian paths.
Public transport systems will continue being a vital part of the infrastructure future, so one step may be to isolate people more from each other while on public transport.
Futurist Klaus Æ. Mogensen imagines that rather than having large, open buses and train carriages, we can divide them into smaller compartments holding just two or four people, directly accessible from the street or railway platform, keeping passengers separated by glass walls. When a compartment is vacated, it can be disinfected by ultraviolet light or a disinfectant spray, making it safe for the next passengers. A green light above a door indicates that it is now safe to enter. [4]
While we don’t know if such modes of transport may come to exist it highlights two fundamental concepts: subdivision of spaces and periodic disinfection of public areas.
Packed trains in Japan. Pat B.
Open spaces:
One solution to address the overcrowding issue was proposed by New York City councilor Corey Johnson: close off parts of the city to traffic and open them up for people.
Their street closures lasted just 11 days, but across the globe, from Calgary to Cologne, cities have been closing off streets to give people more space. Oakland has gone as far as shutting down 74 miles of city streets for walkers and cyclists. In future cities, planning for pedestrians may go a step further by building much wider pavements, according to the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health (2020).
Planning open spaces, distributed across our cities, with an abundance of natural elements are crucial to making sure our communities grow greener as they grow denser. Not all density is created equal—development and trees don’t compete, they support each other. Treelined streets and lively parks enhance the value of development, which in turn pays for more trees and parks.
Therapeutic parks in Singapore. Getty Images.
Unequal patterns:
Nearly one billion people live and work in informal, under-serviced, and precarious urban conditions worldwide [5].
Poor people inhabit the lowest quality housing areas of a city. They live at the highest densities and in the most cramped accommodation. These areas have higher air pollution levels (which has been linked to a higher number of Covid-19 deaths), and poor quality or inaccessible utilities and services. They often have the smallest areas of open public spaces, and therefore are disproportionately affected by park closures due to lockdown measures on public green spaces.
Public measures do not affect all people the same and it is important to have that in mind while facilitating the wellbeing of different populations of our community.
@cecile.dormeau
Sanitation spots:
Due to our natural connection to touch, and with sanitation being such a crucial part of preventing diseases, it would be fundamental to provide handwashing facilities in public places to reduce the risk of passing infections.
“If everyone was washing their hands diligently we would see a reduction in all types of infection. Perhaps one of the reasons we’re not is because there aren’t these facilities in place.”
Sanitation spots in public spaces. Getty Images.
Adaptable spaces:
With the possibility of pandemics being recurrent, our cities will need to be more adaptable, having both the space and capability to create rapid, temporary structures.
One example of this is the temporary Nightingale Hospital in London, converted in just nine days and able to accommodate 4,000 patients and a 1,000-bed hospital in Wuhan, China, that was built from the ground up in just 10 days.
“During a crisis like we’re in at the moment, it would mean creating temporary housing and [having] health centers be built more flexibly, as well as having space available in cities for those.”
Temporary Nightingale Hospital in London. REUTERS/Stefan Rousseau/Pool
Data mapping:
One of the biggest changes to our cities won’t be so visible as a fancy new building or a big new park, according to Davina Jackson, author of Data cities: How satellites are transforming architecture and design.
“Cities of the future are going to have to be designed to deal with completely invisible flows [like a global virus], and that’s where the data mapping comes in.”
A city built to track pandemics would likely be filled with hidden sensors to help map the spread of diseases, such as when researchers at the Senseable City Lab at MIT placed sensors into sewers to detect concentrations of illegal drugs and harmful bacteria in specific areas.
Health passporting has been implemented in places like Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province in China, where three colors are the basis of the health surveillance system: a red QR code on your phone confines you to 14 days of self-quarantine, a yellow one cuts the quarantine to seven days, while anyone lucky enough to have a green code can move around as they wish.
The objective of the system, which is run by the online payment platform Alipay, is to monitor each person’s movements around the city (which requires careful consideration about privacy implications) and any changes in their health to identify whether they are at risk of contracting Covid-19 or of infecting others.
Each Hangzhou resident must input their personal data, record their temperature daily and report on their general health, as well as scanning their phone whenever they enter their own home or anyone else’s, rent a bike, travel on a train or bus, or go into a shop, bank, market or park.
Re-balancing:
It’s absurd that in many cases the most important things are the most abandoned in society, like healthcare and education, and this situation is just another reflection of how we are living in an imbalanced infrastructure that does not meet our needs.
If this time serves us for anything may it be to rethink our priorities.
The very nature of pandemics is that they are dependent on the interactions of humans with their environment and with each other, and this massive interruption in our lives makes us increasingly aware of the importance of health systems, of being around nature, and even having physical human contact.
“We have abused nature, and [generated] epidemics. Before thinking about new cities, the focus should be on preventing new diseases from emerging in the first place. I believe that cities against pandemics will be just that, places where each species will find respect in coexistence.”
Many are also seeing the links between the climate and the COVID-19 crises. Furthermore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic — the result of our broken relationship with animals and natural ecosystems. [6]
Human beings and their activities have significantly altered 75% of the land and 66% of the oceans [7], changing the planet to such an extent as to determine the birth of a new era called the “Anthropocene”.
The pathway of pandemics. WWF.
The COVID-19 pandemic is not a crisis of the city, but the crisis of a certain kind of city.
Decades of “market-oriented” policies have imposed severe limits on the public planning system – human healthcare, environmental and biodiversity protection, food distribution, housing, transport, services – to respond meaningfully to (and protect us from) a pandemic.
A city’s ability to limit the scale and severity of a crisis and disaster ultimately depends on the extent of popular control over decision making, the level of social equity, the quality of our public infrastructure, and the responsiveness of our planning system. Our cities are vulnerable because we have weakened their ability to anticipate, prepare, and respond to crises.
Can the deep human, economic, and social costs of this tragedy trigger a change?
It is a time that may serve to course-correct and work towards fairer, more resilient cities in the wake of COVID-19. Some communities are taking the moment to push sustainability and health policies, now that we have proof that we can make change, and adapt to it at a fast pace.
Sincerely, wearing masks 24/7 and maintaining six feet distance as a new design unit (when we know that placemaking thrives by social livability and connections) does not feel like a desirable new normal.
Cities flourish on the opportunities for work and play, and the endless variety of available goods and services. If fear of disease becomes the new reality, cities could be in for a bland and antiseptic future.
It is important to analyze the many things that have gone wrong, as well as what we have done better than before, with considerations in key areas such as the governance of our cities, how they are designed, and our social behavior in response to a crisis.
Now emphasis shifts away from personal experience and toward responsibilities in the underlying realities that bind us. Dashboards and statistical models of contagion have become the visual profile of the event, and the image of our interconnected whole seen in these reflections should stay with us, long after the crisis passes.
The challenge is learning to see our place in the world differently and acting on it.
References:
Bratton, B. (2020) 18 lessons of quarantine urbanism. https://strelkamag.com/en/article/18-lessons-from-quarantine-urbanism
Leung, A. (2019) The Key to Green Cities and Mindsets: Densification.
https://meetingoftheminds.org/the-key-to-green-cities-and-mindsets-densification-14887
Kourlas, G. (2020) How We Use Our Bodies to Navigate a Pandemic. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/arts/dance/choreographing-the-street-coronavirus.html
Mogensen, K. (2020) Pandemics and the Future of Public Transport.
https://medium.com/copenhagen-institute-for-futures-studies/pandemics-and-the-future-of-public-transport-1b607b888404
Wilkinson, A. (2020) The impact of COVID-19 in informal settlements – are we paying enough attention?
https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/the-impact-of-covid-19-in-informal-settlements-are-we-paying-enough-attention/
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2017) Zoonotic Diseases. https://www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html
WWF. (2019) Scientists’ warn of looming ecological collapse must prompt policy action. https://www.wwf.eu/?uNewsID=346735