11/1/2020 How Will COVID-19 Affect Urban Planning?

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By Rogier van den Berg April 10, 2020

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Listening to communities to co-create

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The fate of millions of small businesses and workers that make urban centers work is up in the air. Kathmandu,
Nepal. Photo by Corey O’Hara/iStock 2h

The impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic are still being understood, but it does seem WRI Ross Center
clear that this crisis will make a mark on cities, physically and socially, that will echo for @WRIRossCities
generations. Community engagement is key to

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How we plan our cities has always been a reflection of prevailing cultural and technological
trends and even major crises. The cholera epidemics in the 19th century sparked the
introduction of modern urban sanitation systems. Housing regulations around light and air
were introduced as a measure against respiratory diseases in overcrowded slums in
Europe during industrialization. The introduction of railroads had an immense impact on Share on Facebook
national urban systems, and the mass production of the car has led to cities that bleed
seamlessly into sprawling suburbs, creating vast city regions. In recent years, digitalization
and data have changed the way we navigate cities and how communities mobilize and
advocate for change.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has already significantly altered urban life. The number of people
moving around has dropped to unprecedentedly low levels. Work from home is the new WRI Ross Cente…
normal – for those who can afford it, and for whom it’s even a feasible option to begin with. पृ आवड े
The fate of millions of small businesses and workers that make urban centers work is up in
the air.

These changes have sparked a debate about how cities should be built and, perhaps more
importantly, how they can better respond to current and future crises. We see five key ways
urban planning will be affected in the years to come.

1. Focus on Access to Core Services

The spread of COVID-19 in the world’s most connected urban centers has raised questions WRI Ross Center
about healthy density. Have we become too urban? Most pandemics are inherently “anti- for Sustainable
urban,” as The New York Times’ Michael Kimmelman notes. But density is what makes Cities
७ तासां पूव
cities work in the first place; it’s a major part of why they are economic, cultural and political
powerhouses. This #WorldCitiesDay marks a
critical moment for cities
In fact, density is the precondition for effective urban service provision, and far too many across the globe on the
people in cities today lack access to basic services, as our World Resources Report, frontlines of #COVID19 impact
Towards a More Equal City, has explored. It’s the lack of access to essential services such & response.
as water, housing and health care, that has exacerbated the challenge of responding Now is the time to reimagine
effectively to COVID-19 in many cities. Poor access makes lockdown orders impossible to recovery...
comply with in some places. Closing this urban services divide must be a priority for cities To drive transformational
going forward. change for more... आणखी पहा

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Blogroll
Poor access to core services makes lockdown orders impossible to comply with in some places. Kibera,
Nairobi. Photo by Schreibkraft/Wikimedia Commons C40 Cities
CEOs for Cities
Citiscope
2. Affordable Housing and Public Spaces CityLab
CityTalk
How we plan our cities determines to a large extent how resilient they are. Population CityTalk USA (ICLEI)
density without adequate public spaces or proper affordable housing provision will lead to Cooltown Studios
problems. This was the reason many housing laws and regulations were implemented in Future Cape Town
Europe at the beginning of the 20th
century, halting many diseases, for example. COVID-19 Gehl Live (Gehl Architects)
may prompt changes too, from temporary measures that make it feasible for people to Insights (World Resources Institute)
Next City
follow social distancing guidelines to more lasting changes that should focus on improving
Places Wire
access to affordable housing and public space like upgrading more informal settlements in Planetizen
place. Project for Public Spaces
Shareable: Cities
Africa, India and South East Asia face the enormous task of shaping the next generation of Smart Cities Dive
cities. More than 2.5 billion urban dwellers will be added to the world by 2050, 90% of them Sustainable Cities (World Bank)
in Africa and Asia. It’s estimated 1.2 billion city dwellers lack access to affordable and The Dirt (American Society of Landscape
secure housing today. As it turns, a large share of future growth is going to be unplanned, Architects)

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11/1/2020 How Will COVID-19 Affect Urban Planning? | TheCityFix

which could raise this number to as high as 1.6 billion people by just 2025. Change is The Guardian Cities
needed and perhaps COVID-19 will be the wake-up call to get us there. The Transport Politic
TheCityFix Brasil
TheCityFix Mexico
3. Integrated Green and Blue Spaces
TheCityFix Turkiye
Transport for Development (World Bank)
One of the few places that have seen a surge in traffic during COVID-19 lockdowns (at least
Treehugger
as long as they remain open) is urban parks. A new approach to city planning should bring
URBANET
open spaces, watersheds, forests and parks into the heart of how we think about and plan Velo Mondial
our cities. WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities

A more holistic approach to planning that combines gray, green and blue infrastructure
supports better health, better water management (flooding contributes to many epidemics
and diseases after natural disasters), and climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Furthermore, larger open spaces within the urban fabric can help cities implement
emergency services and evacuation protocols.

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We know that cities, often low-lying and flood-prone, will be at the frontlines of climate impacts too. How do we
ensure city-region landscapes are more resilient the next time? Chennai, 2015. Photo by Veethika/Wikimedia
Commons

4. Increased City-Regional Planning

What happens in cities does not stay in cities. The cascading economic effect of this crisis
will impact supply and production chains in surrounding regions and ripple out into global
networks too, as we are already seeing. We should learn from this unprecedented
disruption to better plan for the next crisis. We know that cities, often low-lying and flood-
prone, will be at the frontlines of climate impacts, for example. How do we ensure city-
region landscapes are more resilient the next time?

We need more integrated city-regional planning around economies, energy provision,

transport networks and food production so that these networks can become pillars of
resilience rather than weak points. Such a planning approach will bring a broader and
different set of stakeholders to the table, creating a stronger coalition for change.

5. More City-Level, Granular Data

Data is mainly now aggregated at the national level, while many decisions on containment
of any epidemic or pandemic are made at the local level. To help cities harness the power
of big data – in response to this crisis but also other long-term sustainability and equity
challenges – we need to empower cities with more granular, regularly updated data streams
that can provide better evidence for decision-making.

Resilience is all about interdependencies. That means that if we keep the data in silos, we
cannot track where the pivot points are, and we are not able to take the right measures.
Cities should take a cue from South Korea’s data-heavy COVID-19 response, and reach out
to community groups, universities, the private sector and concerned citizens to start
building more comprehensive, community-based data sets to understand and better
address the challenges ahead.

As lockdowns stretch on in many places, we are only beginning to understand how COVID-
19 will affect how we approach urban planning. Planned for properly, density is a good thing
for cities, and it will be again. But will we do more to protect the most vulnerable? Will we
make cities more resilient to future crises? Will we make green and blue spaces front and
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11/1/2020 How Will COVID-19 Affect Urban Planning? | TheCityFix

center of our infrastructure investments? And will we seriously address the fact that it’s not
just physically, but economically, socially and environmentally that cities are connected to
their surrounding regions? We will rebuild our crucial economic and social fabric. It’s our
decision to rebuild better.

Rogier van den Berg is Director of Urban Development at WRI Ross Center for
Sustainable Cities.

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After the Crisis: How COVID-19 Can Drive Transformational Change in Cities
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Tags: access, affordable housing, big data, community engagement, coronavirus, COVID-
19, density, equity, green space, informal settlements, natural infrastructure, pandemic,
public space, regional planning, resilience, Rogier van den Berg, slum, sustainable
development, urban parks, urban planning, urban services, World Resources Report

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Cris Rollo • 6 months ago

A city is not homogeneous and understanding the city with finer granularity will show
where the vulnerabilities are. It is not density per se that aids the spread of pandemic but
the multiple layers of social, economic and spatial inequities that contributes to
vulnerabilities within cities.
2△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Dusko Bogun • 7 months ago

The spectacular speed and scale of the Covid-19 pandemic has been largely assisted by
the density, mobility and connectivity of the modern city - popular attributes which most
city governments love to brag about, and which most planners like to promise even more
of. Perhaps the high price of the pandemic in the big, dense, dynamic cities - such as
Wuhan, Milan and New York - will now cool some heads off. If it does, then planners
might see how density makes cities vulnerable to all sorts of hazards, not just
pandemics. That would enable them to see beyond the 'compact city' delusion and,
instead, consider the enormous, untapped potential for resilience that lies in the low-
density suburbia. De-risking our dense, oversize cities, which are so perilously
dependent on their vulnerable, complex, carbon-intensive infrastructure, is the most
important task for urban planning today. This is not so much about this or the next
pandemic, as it is about the coming climate mayhem. The Covid-19 is just a timely
warning how vulnerable our hyper-urban civilisation is and how urgent is the transition to
decentralised, clean, green and smart infrastructure, within a polycentric city-region.
(Dushko Bogunovich, Auckland)
△ ▽ 2 • Reply • Share ›

janieblack > Dusko Bogun • 7 months ago

Sorry, this is nonsense. Singapore and Hong Kong and many other very dense
cities that have not demonstrated the "high price of the pandemic" illustrate that.
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g p p
Take your own advice and have a think about your own anti-density 'delusion' and
maybe think about how *both* the higher density inner cities and lower density
suburbia can respond in resilient ways.
1△ ▽ 1 • Reply • Share ›

Sachin > janieblack • 5 months ago

I agree with janie. Low density suburbia is not sustainable. COVID-19 is
affecting our cities but lets not forget that we only have one planet.
△ ▽ 1 • Reply • Share ›

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