City Planning in a Post-Pandemic World- What We Can Expect Beyond 2020

Planners have successfully responded to pandemics before. In the 19th and early 20th century went through an era of infrastructure development. Cases such as the Soho Epidemic in London were caused by the dumping of raw sewage into the environment which would contaminate the water supply(1). The solution was to create infrastructure to protect drinking water supplies by moving wastewater separately. This ultimately ensured the possibility of people transmitting diseases to be greatly reduced.

In recent years, planners have considered to ensure such infrastructure stays in place in new communities. However, planning assumptions have not accounted for a world where a contagious virus could devastate populations at the global and local scales.

Current planning practices aim to increase the quality of life of residents by maximizing opportunities for social interactions and reducing time spent commuting. To enact this, planning movements of the 21st century have been responding to the faults of planning of the 20th century by refocusing on having mixed use communities that have access to multiple modes of transportation.

Planning for people's lives to be more efficient should also have adaptable constraints. As more people live closer together and move in tightly congested transit vehicles it could be easy for any virus that has not yet been introduced to modern day humans to move between people.

This pandemic has made planners revisit what it means to enact good planning. In an era when planners want to remove restaurant drive- throughs, drive-throughs have been a major contributor to reducing the spread of COVID-19 while getting more information on the status of the population in South Korea(2). Planners also have been putting efforts in reducing big box stores, although it could be argued that they have played a strong role in adjusting to consumer demands during the pandemic. They have also been the most adequate spaces in providing essential goods such as groceries, cleaning supplies and medicine while being large enough to give customers enough space to keep adequate distances from each other.

Planners are also generally insistent on moving the population through multiple means of transportation, refocusing on building LRT and Subway lines along dense city avenues as opposed to building new infrastructure for automobiles. It is shocking to see how a major transit service such as GO Transit in Toronto now has lost 90% of its ridership due to the pandemic(3). This makes sense as it is a commuter service. It is also worthy to point that citizens that have access to a car are likely to take their shopping trips in a car rather than take available transit to prevent the spread of the virus, and to be able to carry more groceries which ultimately enables them to shop less frequently.

I am not advocating against recent planning movements in metropolitan areas aimed at improving the quality of life of residents. Rather, I am taking the opportunity of thoroughly rethinking our planning methods to hopefully spark new ideas that could be more adaptable for future unexpected impacts to society.

Changes in the way we think about the way we plan our communities are sure to come. Regarding the movement of creating denser neighbourhoods, it is likely that we will revisit ensuring adequate dwelling sizes. This would apply particularly to condos as it has proven to be difficult to quarantine residents in micro living spaces. Having multiple elevators or access/exit points of high-rise buildings could also lit community spread.

Larger changes likely to come involve how society will function as the way work could change with the use of technology. The pandemic has forced companies and schools to rely heavily on technology, simulating what the future maybe like. Schooling, including university level exams are temporarily all online. Additionally, many specialized professions where possible with today's technology have continued to function with workers being able to create work spaces at home while still being productive.

Offices and schools will likely be in high demand for use in our cities in the short term, however in the long term there could be changes to this as our work culture integrates more with technology. We could see more of our workforce and students staying at home in the future as part of a new normal of everyday life. This can have serious spin off consequences in the planning industry if we do not prepare now and think about how we can re purpose existing educational and office facilities, as well as ensuring our transportation options are flexible to adjust to new commuting demands.

Sources

1. Snow, John. “On the Mode of Communication of Cholera”. https://archive.org/stream/b28985266#page/n7/mode/2up

2. Al Jazeera. “Testing times: Why South Korea's COVID-19 strategy is working” March 21. 2020..https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/upfront/2020/03/testing-times-south-korea-covid-19-strategy-working-200320051718670.html

3. Westoll, Nick. Global News. “Coronavirus: GO Transit further reducing service temporarily after 90% ridership drop” April 3, 2020. https://globalnews.ca/news/6777406/coronavirus-go-transit-service-reduction/