1. Cities and Disease

The current pandemic is a reminder that the history of cities is bound up with the history of disease. As dense concentrations of people living and working together, they are a target-rich environment for disease, virus transmission, plagues, and epidemics. There was an urban death penalty as earlier cities had high death rates. The desire to leave the city during epidemics was a constant theme. A plague in Florence in 1348 is the backdrop to Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. He tells the story of 10 young people who escape the city to live in a villa. To pass the time in their self-imposed quarantine, they tell stores to each other. It became the basis for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and for countless variations in world literature, cinema, and television. In 1665, Isaac Newton was quarantined in his family farm far enough away from Cambridge to escape the bubonic plague. For academics working at home today, he set the bar very high. If Newton could invent calculus and develop the basis for the Newtonian world view while quarantined, it does raise the question of our own intellectual productivity during our enforced stay at home.

Urbanization is one of the great achievements of modern societies and a condition of social progress ^[1]. It is also an accelerant of infection diseases ^[2]. Cities as dense concentrations of people provide the ideal environment for the spread of contagious diseases. Cities throughout history have been shaped by pandemics and their consequences ^[3][4]. The city is a resilient entity, and each critical episode has presented an opportunity to shape and rethink urban planning to ensure health and hygiene, exhibiting a great capacity to evolve after critical episodes ^[5].

Epidemics and pandemics played an important role in urban history ^[6]. The creation of parks, promenades, and public squares in European cities, for example, were early attempts to provide safer urban spaces ^[7]. Perhaps the largest impact was the rise of the public health movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries ^[8]. Public health initiatives were attempts to deal with the cities as unhealthy places filled with of contagious and fatal diseases ^[9]. Cities became the testing ground for the development of public health. John Snow’s 1854 mappings of cholera in the streets of London is a famous example ^[10]. Cities were engineered to provide clean water, remove garbage, and treat sewerage. For all intents and purposes, the modern city was reimagined, reengineered, and reconfigured to meet the threat of disease. The role of cities as independent political units responding to pandemics is well documented for the flu epidemic of 1918 ^[11][12][13] and for H1N1 ^[14][15]. Cities are shaped and will continue to be shaped by responses to infectious diseases.

2.The New Global Urban Context

The world is becoming more urban, and the world’s rural population is estimated to peak in 2021, and thereafter all population growth will be in cities. Global urbanization with associated land-use conversion and increasing global connectivity is the backdrop of this and more recent pandemics. One study found that the destruction of the natural ecosystems increases the number of rats, bats, and other animals that harbor diseases ^[16]. The conversion of wild places eradicates the large species allowing more of the smaller animals, such as bats and rats, that carry the most pathogens. In the Anthropocene, we are exposed to more human-pathogen interactions and more cross-species spillovers. Over 60 percent of new infectious diseases come from wild animals. The extension of urbanization, in association with commercial agriculture, transforms the wild areas and increases the possibility of more new viruses, for which we have no immunity. Large cities surrounded by agricultural land-uses, particularly in tropical regions with higher mammal diversity, have higher probabilities for human emergent infectious diseases ^[2]. The COVID-19 pandemic reveals the zoonotic threat caused by land-use conversion of wildlands into farmland, pasture, and urban areas.

The connected nature of global urbanization is also an important contextual factor. Space–time convergence between urban areas has an impact on disease transmission. With more and quicker global travel between city hubs, local outbreaks turn more easily into epidemics that can turn into global pandemics. In the first two weeks of January 2020, there were 1300 flights from China to the US, depositing 380,000 people including 4000 who came direct from Wuhan. COVID-19 also arrived in the US from Europe. The devastating impact on New York City was most likely from an air passenger corridor from China to Italy to the U.S. ^[17]. The virus spread out from these global hubs to the surrounding areas. In many cities, it was the more affluent global travelers, the rich cosmopolitans, who brought the disease. In the city of Houston, for example, the virus came with international travelers, first impacted the white, affluent neighborhoods before moving onto the lower-income, minority communities ^[18]. A similar tale can be told for cities across the world ^[19].

Globalization has made international travel cheaper, easier, and more prevalent. Within months, perhaps weeks, of the first outbreak, the disease seeded and spread around the world. It unfolded against the backdrop of an urbanized world. The majority, 55% of the world population, lives in cities ^[20]. Rapid urbanization is driven in part by the promise that urban centers offer better opportunities, jobs, quality of life, and access to better services and goods. The pandemic reverses the calculus to some extent. Cities are now dense congregations of people where the disease can spread quickly and effectively. Cities, once the hope of the future and of the global south in particular, are now platforms for the pandemic.

3. COVID-19 and Its Urban Implications

A novel respiratory disease was identified in the city of Wuhan in December 2019. It developed sometime between October and November 2019 when a bat coronavirus, perhaps combined with a pangolin virus, entered the human population, probably through people who were processing bat carcasses for traditional Chinese medicine. The virus was given the name of severe acute respiratory system coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease it causes, a respiratory illness that can be fatal especially for those aged over 60 and for those with underlying health conditions, is known as COVID-19 ^[21][22]. It spread quickly, and by January 2020, it had infected over 96 million people and caused over 2 million deaths according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The mortality figures are probably severe underestimates given the inconsistent and variable coding of COVID-related deaths and the inability of countries with limited health access to detect the spread of the virus ^[23]. The virus also mutated into new more contagious strains.

COVID-19 is one amongst the many pandemics in recent history. Since the flu of 1918, at least eight pandemics with global social and economic effects have been documented ^[24]. Pandemics are part of the modern world. About 14 million people die annually because of a pandemic ^[25].

An obvious question: what are the urban implications of this health crisis? To answer this question, we review the literature on public space, transportation, connectivities, and the urban economy that were produced in the last year that seek to answer the question in both the immediate and more verifiable short term and the more speculative longer term.

3.1. Urban Public Space

The public space of cities is where people concentrate, mingle, and interact. Often prized as an important part of the convivial nature of cities, in a pandemic they become feared as places where contagion between strangers is more likely ^[26]. The closure of urban public spaces, one of the more dramatic responses to COVID-19, especially impacts third spaces—those places that are neither work nor home—such as barbershops, bars, cafes, gyms, and restaurants ^[27]. Their closure reminds us of the social importance of these third places. Anderson ^[28] in his study of Philadelphia, describes what he terms as the cosmopolitan canopy of the city that consists of islands of civility. These are particularly important in segregated cities where different people can come together albeit in fleeting and sometimes ephemeral interactions. The cosmopolitan city was ripped apart by the urban lockdown. Even as the lockdown weakens and these third places now reopen, they face the problems of social distancing and limitations on the size of clientele ^[29]. It is in the third places of cities where businesses face very difficult times, with many perhaps closing ^[30][31]. The longer-term impact may be in the form of less-crowded places with stricter controls over spacing distancing and limitations on direct human-to-human contact between strangers. The postpandemic city may be less convivial. The decline in the number and thickness of third places may lead to an increase in safety but perhaps at a loss of social and psychological intimacy.

It is clear that the postpandemic city will be faced with new design challenges in order to make cities safer ^[32], or at least the illusion of safety. Urban places may also become sites of theatrical displays to assuage the fears of customers and consumer. Just as with security in the age of terrorist threats, health safety measures may become another form of theatrical display in the city. Reducing overall density may not be all that effective. One study showed little relationship between density and COVID-related infections and deaths across 36 cities across the world ^[33]. A repurposing of cities may also involve a reassessment of long-established public spaces such as the quiet outdoor café, the less-used public park, the less-familiar haunts, and the more private part of the city. The redesign has redistributional consequences. Lower income groups for example may rely on urban public spaces for social gatherings more than the more affluent who may have more space at home and so public space closures may have a greater negative impact on the family and social interactions of the less affluent ^[34].

History has shown that pandemics can be a catalyst for building safer environments ^[35][36]. The design of safer public spaces is not new, but the application is highly uneven. This pandemic provides an opportunity to introduce safety and health criteria in urban planning and to turn impromptu initiatives into permanent changes in urban planning ^[37].

The layout of the contemporary city emerged long after the impact of previous epidemics and pandemics were long forgotten. In the past 30 years, there has been an emphasis on densely populated urban spaces, from crowded sports arenas to high-density pedestrianized areas. That was the old normal; postpandemic, the new normal will be more concerned with health impacts of density, hygiene, and the safety of urban public spaces. This is likely to become an embedded rather than a transitory condition as long as the risk of future pandemics remains high. The risk of future pandemics remains a real possibility. However, it is important to remember that this restructuring raises the issue of the right to the postpandemic city. The postpandemic city will not only be a public health issue but also a political concern about who gets to decide ^[38]. There is a need to reimagine and rebuild the city in a world where pandemics may become more prevalent due to globalization ^[39] and climate change ^[40].

3.2. Urban Transportation

COVID-19 has involved marked changes in urban transport. First, there was an initial steep decline of all road traffic as less people travelled to work either by private car or by public transport. The decline of car traffic has created an opportunity to reinforce the shift away from car-dominant cities. Busy car thoroughfares were quieted with less traffic and less demand for street parking. This has created an opportunity for a reimaging of urban public spaces away from the dominance of cars and car users toward greater emphasis on non-car spaces. Some city streets became “street eateries” as restaurants spilled out onto sidewalks to provide open-air socially distanced places. The transformation of busy streets into pedestrianized spaces allowed social distancing and reimagining of what city streets could and should be. With COVID-19 lockdowns vastly reducing the use of roads and public transit systems, many city authorities are taking advantage by closing streets to cars, opening others to bicycles, and widening sidewalks to help residents maintain the six-foot distancing ^[29]. Cities across the world such as Boston, Vienna, Oakland, México, Milan, and Bogotá are adding and widening bike lines ^[41][42][43]. This is a continuation of a previous trend that encouraged walking and bicycling. The postpandemic city may be a more walkable and bicycling city than could have been imagined prepandemic. While the shift away from cars was already taking place, the pandemic reinforced these trends.

Second, an important part of the city is public transport. One of the immediate impacts of the pandemic was a rapid and steep reduction in demand. People worked from home and were wary of densely packed urban transportations. The calculus changed. In general, public transport is perhaps cheaper than private transport, but in the pandemic city, it is seen as riskier. Health advice to avoid crowded, enclosed spaces, and time spent in close contact with other citizens —each a feature of a normally functioning transit system—has made passengers more skeptical to re-enter the public transit system ^[26]. This drastic loss of revenue is undermining the short- and even the longer-term financial health of urban transport authorities.

3.3. Cities and Connectivities

The global urban network is the neural network of globalization. Along this network flows capital, people, ideas, and practices. Of these four, it is the flow of people that is the most drastically affected by the pandemic. Tourist and business travel were initially suspended and then reopened to varying degrees ^[44]. To some extent, urban tourism may return, but business travel may fail to recover with a consequent knock-on effect on convention hotels, convention cities, and the business services sector that deal with international business travel. After months and perhaps years of online operations, the business, government, and nongovernment communities may find it less necessary to fund business travel, especially as conference call technology becomes more sophisticated.

There is also the broader argument that the pandemic signals if not the end of globalization, then at the very least a marked shift ^[45][46]. Many nation-states are preoccupied with tightening their borders and prioritizing the health of their citizens. To what extent this will continue postpandemic is a moot point. Some see the COVID-19 pandemic as reversing the links between globalization and urbanization, increasing the distance between countries and among people. These changes will make for a safer and more resilient world, but also one that could be less prosperous, stable, and fulfilling ^[47]. Others argue that the whole world is now so radically interconnected that retreat from globalization may be temporary but not permanent ^[48]. Others argue that this moment provides an opportunity for a reset, the opportunity to remake globalization and to harness globalization to a common purpose or face a retreat into isolationism and nationalism that will crash the world economy and increase international tensions ^[49][50].