Room to breathe: Reinventing urban design to withstand future pandemics
By Annabelle Mathers, Civil Engineering, 2022
The idea of transforming cities into ideal, or even relatively effective, urban spaces that accommodate physical distancing and large fluctuations in public behavior can seem overwhelming, especially in the tumultuous wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This task, as a whole, is enormous on an economic, political, and social level, with an innumerable amount of moving parts and complex factors. Fortunately, urban planners, engineers, and architects are working to develop cost-conscious changes that make cities more flexible and functionally dynamic in preparation for future times of great sickness. It may not presently be possible to create components of a city that completely prevent viral transmission; however, this effort may decrease transmission and urban shutdowns, improve quarantine experiences, and accelerate societal recovery.
Across different countries, climates, and local cultures, the priorities of urban inhabitants differ. Thus, there may be widely nuanced applications of solutions pertaining to common areas of concern including offices, environmental psychology, infrastructure, and communal public spaces. Ongoing research now attempts to consider and mull these evolving factors as the wait continues for more consistent statistical analysis. Fear, harbored by a more wary public, now challenges trends like open-concept offices, high density infrastructure, and community spaces that encourage physical interaction. Instead of creating spaces that perpetually enforce social and physical distancing, society may work toward facilitating spaces that are, whenever necessary, creatively flexible enough to accommodate varying degrees of societal change without complete separation and shutdown.
Instead of creating spaces that perpetually enforce social and physical distancing, society may work toward facilitating spaces that are, whenever necessary, creatively flexible enough to accommodate varying degrees of societal change without complete separation and shutdown.
This transitional concept of urban design allows the public to weigh the risks and rewards with societal changes and expenditures, and can be applied toward epidemics of different severities and characteristics. Public health must be maintained; however, the drastic application of rigid lifestyle changes and physical distancing in perpetuity has already pushed people to reevaluate the balance of risk and reward. Urban improvements have to consider this sense of realism, while also envisioning an ingenuitive society beyond its current state. Private homes and spaces highlight the smaller, and realistically easier changes that may still be relatively important to individuals.
Environmental psychology, in particular, permeates the boundaries of public and private spaces. This term refers to the study of the way in which the surrounding world, mostly built and natural environments in this application, affects mental wellbeing. With the lines blurred between work and home during quarantine, the uncomfortable physical and mental confines of homemade office spaces, and rooms in general, are more apparent. In other words, the spatial chaos of quarantine may distort spatial associations and comforts held by the average person. Adaptive spaces in homes are especially helpful for remote workers, where multifunctional rooms and interior setups enable individuals to more comfortably reallocate space for work and leisure.
Urban improvements have to consider this sense of realism, while also envisioning an ingenuitive society beyond its current state.
Public office spaces may also need to question and reorganize spaces and priorities for meetings, cubicles, foot traffic, and shared spaces like kitchens. Offices that lack private, distanced workspaces, and that encourage a high degree of collaboration in shared spaces, now may consider temporary strategies for a more independent, spatially restrictive work environment. Although not every existing office can be retrofitted to become perfectly flexible in terms of physical spaces, it is the general open-mindedness toward preparation and adaptation that may be beneficial.
Additional questions arise regarding whether reinvigorated appreciation for outdoor spaces and spacious interiors will affect architectural design of urban homes that lack the backyards and square-footage of suburban ones. A desire for rooftop and urban gardens, windows, and natural light in homes has the potential to grow considering the burden that a tiny apartment may place on mental health during quarantine. This increase in appreciation for biophilic design in homes (not to mention public office spaces) may also include green walls, water features, and house plants. As architects experiment more with incorporating aquatic and plant-based feature walls into the average home to improve aesthetics and even for eco-friendly purposes, the application to the average household will hopefully become more realistic and manageable.
Likewise, appreciation for natural surroundings may extend to redesigned public spaces involving parks, recreational space, and pedestrian amenities. How long this newfound fascination with outdoor spaces may last is unclear, but the reconfiguration of parks can be a long-lasting, multi-purposeful, and comparatively low-cost way to boost public morale and safety. For example, complex park walkways created from maze-like hedges envisioned by Precht, an Austrian studio, emphasize the sudden desire for individual exercise space and variety. Larger, open spaces may become more flexible toward greater compartmentalization and expansion for concentrated activities and field hospitals respectively. Furthermore, smaller pockets of greenery in denser residential areas may gain greater purpose and alleviate the attendance burden on central spaces. More spatially dynamic and resilient cities may incorporate greenspace with variety and prevalence all throughout the urban area, thus reducing the need for extreme emphasis on centralized amenities.
More spatially dynamic and resilient cities may incorporate greenspace with variety and prevalence all throughout the urban area, thus reducing the need for extreme emphasis on centralized amenities.
Discussion of pedestrian changes also demands changes in public transportation. Increased attention toward bicycles and cars further complicates the typical commuter patterns during and after physical distancing measures. Again, experts must consider the question of whether or not bicyclists will truly remain prominent in areas of inconvenient climate, roadways, and lifestyles. Major cities within Scandanavian countries, the United States (e.g. Boston, New York City), Latin American, and other areas of the world continue to experiment with closed roads, enhanced bicycle lanes, and widened sidewalks. Because transportation infrastructure is one of the most expensive undertakings, efforts focus on retrofitting existing facilities and tactical application of changes to key areas of cities for the utmost beneficial output.
Keeping an open mind toward traffic flow may generally help city officials plan for large fluctuations in commuters, curbside parking, and delivery services. In light of these changes, use of public transportation, notably in the form of trains and buses, often decreases severely, with the potential to suffer long-term distrust from a spatially-wary public. Preplanned sanitation services and strategic dispersal and time management are retrofit alternatives to completely rebuilding interiors originally meant to maximize capacity. The losses to public transportation may be inevitable, especially with the transition to remote work, but utilizing this hindsight in the future may allow cities to reduce the amount of resources wasted in the early stages of quarantine.
Urban density is a major component of urban design, but the dynamics of such patterns, especially with respect to sickness, can be difficult to define under statistics and trends. Simply relating urban density to transmission rates is a tricky task.
Finally, urban density is a major component of urban design, but the dynamics of such patterns, especially with respect to sickness, can be difficult to define under statistics and trends. Simply relating urban density to transmission rates is a tricky task. However, extremely crowded venues and housing developments continue to undergo increased scrutiny during viral outbreaks in major cities. Whether or not there is a future migration to suburban areas by disenchanted urbanites, addressing density is made more difficult by the upward growth of cities. Many of the aforementioned topics already address micro-level issues caused by density. Until macro-level changes can be applied to discrete, planned concentrations of housing organization and businesses, smaller urban remedies can take on a broader variety of forms across different cities.
It is unknown exactly how much impact the current pandemic will have on the perception and implementation of urban life, as retrospect may eventually lead to more practical, less reflexive analysis of the situation. Conflicting research results among a wide variety of pandemic-related topics further complicates the response of urban planners and architects. Solutions ideally contain enough foresight to also accommodate changes in populations and standards of living over time. Human society is admirably resilient and often quick to return to habits, but the chance to prevent future combinations of economic and health disasters, regardless of how COVID-19 progresses, may serve as motivation to take a practical and preemptive step toward a more flexible, and ultimately even more resilient society.
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