Practically two years of a pandemic and it seems like she never goes away! Maybe it won’t and we’ll have to learn to live with an endemic situation. This means assimilating the lived experiences, and making the necessary changes so that everything works as close as possible to what we call “normal”.
As we face the pandemic as an important inflection point in urban development, it is essential that we take advantage of this window of opportunity and look to the future, guiding our actions towards inclusive, progressive and possible changes based on multifaceted solutions.
Comprehensive strategies in city planning are needed to provide a balance in the supply of housing, services and infrastructure, as well as enabling approaches that aim to promote health benefits, climate resilience and inclusive development.
Some of these strategies are aligned with a study published by the IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development), which explores transformative actions for the recovery of post-Covid-19 cities.
More generally, the study found, research is critical to exploring both well-established and emerging urban development issues linked to Covid-19. This can help address long-term challenges and provide evidence of the costs of ignoring multiple potential risks or the benefits of addressing them.
The role of urban density in influencing the effects of the pandemic is a point to be further studied.
Population density and urbanization patterns can be associated with high levels of disease spread, although density itself is not a problem, but rather the economic, social and structural conditions of cities that make them more or less capable of implementing responses. effective to the challenges faced.
Indeed, research is needed to develop policies that can promote compact, connected and equitable cities, with a focus on improving active transport and revitalizing public transport as part of cities’ preparedness strategies to face new epidemic outbreaks.
The quest for inclusion involves the development of adaptive measures of social protection and income support and the improvement of essential services such as health systems, garbage collection and education. All initiatives must be carefully designed to support addressing the multiple inequalities in urban areas.
It is essential to implement holistic interventions to improve the health and well-being of people, especially those who have informal work and residents in informal settlements, strengthening livelihoods and improving living conditions.
Making cities resilient is another extremely important aspect. A resilient city strategy must understand and explore the connections between the multiple variables that can cause problems for urban space or people, in isolation or in association. A pandemic has many dimensions and all must be included in models that consider resilience an issue to be definitively incorporated into planning.
It is necessary to understand that the intersection of urban design with public health is an increasingly critical territory. The Covid-19 pandemic has made everyone aware of the weaknesses in everyday life in cities, and we cannot miss this window of opportunity to structure the necessary changes that will improve life in urban areas, even in the most critical conditions of a pandemic. .
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
