Health and Disease Have Always Shaped Our Cities. What Will Be the Impact of COVID-19? – Architectural Digest

In a recent piece for City Lab, Klaus argued that the biggest shifts our cities might experience after the pandemic have already been taking shape. Factors like climate change and noncommunicable epidemics like obesity already influence the way urban planners and architects think about how to build the cities of the future. What something like the current pandemic can do is accelerate those efforts, turning proposed changes like expanded bike lanes, more walkable city districts, and smart buildings from computer simulations and white papers into real-world experiments. Its a story of acceleration and continuity rather than one of super profound disruption revolution, Klaus tells AD PRO of the epidemics impact. It's much more about the acceleration or deceleration of trendsthe question for us is, what are those trends going to be?

The current state of the world offers a few hints. A potent combination of anxiety and government mandates has rendered many public places inoperable. Those that are still thrivingparks, bike paths, streets, and sidewalksnow give Olmsteds early vision a prescient gleam. In Bogot, Colombia, the government moved quickly to expand the citys bike lanes by 47 miles to reduce crowding on public transportation. In Oakland, the mayor shut down 74 miles of streets to motor traffic to allow pedestrians to spread out and get fresh air.

A cyclist wears a facemask in Bogot, Colombia on March 13. To reduce density and curb the spread of COVID-19, the government moved quickly to expand the citys bike lanes.

Less tactically, the debate around the impact of density on public health will continue to rage as architects and planners weigh how to design buildings and cities that cater to both environmental and public health. There will be questions, too, about how technology should be integrated at the city and building level, as Silicon Valley companies grapple with how to deploy their technologies to track the spread of the disease.

Alone, none of these issues will immediately alter the trajectory of the built environment. Tomorrow youll wake up, and your street will likely look the same as it has every other morning this month. If you think about cholera, there were three major outbreaks over a period of 30 years in the United States, Carr says. Nothing changed overnight. The built environment, especially the public realm, takes a long time to catch up.

Its more likely that the pandemic will chip away at our entrenched habits and beliefs. Some people might decide they no longer care for city life and will decamp for less crowded places; others will decide that loosening their convictions about privacy is worth the public health tradeoff. The way many people work, and where they do it from, will shape real estate decisions for years to come. Will there be a reinvigoration of neighborhoods as self-sufficient hubs of activity? Will we come to expect hand sanitizer placed outside of every business? There are more questions than answers at this pointwere witnessing a large-scale public experiment that will slowly, but surely, reveal itself in time.

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Health and Disease Have Always Shaped Our Cities. What Will Be the Impact of COVID-19? - Architectural Digest