SICKNESS AND THE CITY
COVID-19 saw once-heaving main drags turned into desolate ghost towns. Among many other examinations, the pandemic has prompted discussion about how the world’s most densely populated pockets will look and live when it’s all over.
From the get-go, urban centres became hotspots in Wuhan, Milan, New York and, more recently and closer to home, Melbourne. Add to this the mass shift of labour forces to working from home, made possible through online connectivity, and both the safety and necessity of centralised commercial hubs have been questioned. Digging deeper, many have been quick to point the finger at cities and their dense populations as the cause of COVID-19’s spread. Pundits argue viruses are anti-urban, others calling population density the biggest enemy in the fight to control virus outbreaks.
No matter where you stand on the future of cities, it’s hard to deny that some of them are on course for a shake-up and this pandemic has provided us with a number of case studies into how various examples have weathered the virus.
FM takes a look at a few of the things that make up a city, explores the impacts COVID-19 has had and ponders how the responses may influence the ways we work and live together in our built environments of the future.
POPULATION DENSITY
Cities have been hit hard by the virus. On 23 March, a day when his state recorded 4790 new cases and 114 deaths, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo infamously tweeted, “This is not life as usual. There is a density level in NYC that is destructive. It has to stop and it has to stop now. NYC must develop an immediate plan to reduce density.” Ignoring the fact that reducing the
