Pandemic stricken cities on lockdown. Where are our planning and design professionals [now, then and into the future]?

Zaheer Allam; David S Jones

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104805

Pandemic stricken cities on lockdown. Where are our planning and design professionals [now, then and into the future]?

Land use policy. 2020 Sep:97:104805. doi: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104805. Epub 2020 May 30.

Authors

Zaheer Allam¹, David S Jones¹

Affiliation

¹ Live+Smart Research Lab, School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3220, Australia.

Abstract

Chinese cities have been placed upon lockdown in early 2020 in an attempt to contain the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), as increasingly huge demands are being placed upon Chinese and international health professionals to address this pandemic. Surprisingly, planning and design professionals are absent in the discourses about existing and post-COVID-19 strategies and actions even though previous pandemics historically revealed major impacts on the urban fabric from social and economic perspectives. This paper is a call for action for international architectural and urban organisations to include pandemics and similar in their disaster management strategies. This need is very evident in their need to better design creative and relevant protocols in partnership with health discipine organisations, and so that their applied deployment in pandemic stricken cities can be effected integrated seamlessly within normal city environment planning activities and also in incident situations like containing the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cities; Cooperation; Design institutes; Health policy; Pandemic; Resilience; Smart City; Urban economy; Urban planning.