Cities in COVID-19: Reconsidering Urban Form, Mobility, Housing and Planning in Australasia

Abstract

Historically, global pandemics have made profound impacts on cities that lasted for generations and pushed us to reflect on and rethink how cities are lived, planned and re-oriented. The many disruptions brought in by each pandemic challenged urban growth patterns, policies and the status quo of that particular time. For example, we observed significant changes in planning and environmental control regulations in London and other European cities in the aftermath of the Great Fire in1666 [‘The great sanitary awakening’ (Winslow 1923)]. The most recent one, COVID-19 has caused unprecedented shifts in our urban life through changing mobility patterns, new forms of urban governance and pandemic response which have prompted critical questions of contemporary understandings and approaches to planning for resilient urban formations not only in relation to the city but also its hinterland areas and beyond, regional and rural centres (Ali et al. 2022, Alam and Nel 2023). While modern cities are facing complex and wicked problems, particularly in the face of climate change and the embrace of smart technologies, the outbreak of COVID-19 has been dramatic, putting urban policymakers, scholars, citizens and planners on a “pressure test” for rethinking urban planning trends, as well as highlighting existing and emergent deficiencies [Brockhoff, J. cited in Johnston (2020)]. COVID-19 cities are amplifying dialectical characteristics of invisibility and visibility, privilege and privation, selfishness and solidarity, and absence and presence (Rogers et al. 2020). In the past few years, urban life has been redefined by the ‘non-clinical panacea’ (Nahiduzzaman 2020) such as ‘lockdown’ ‘stay home’, ‘quarantine’, ‘self-isolation’, ‘social distancing’, ‘working from home’, ‘telehealth’, and ‘online shopping’. As an immediate effect, there is an unprecedented reduction in urban mobility due to the lockdown of activities, introduction of working from home and limited or online shopping. A recent survey shows around 88% of Australian employers encouraged or required their employees to work from home (Mitchell 2020). According to Grattan Institute, the crowds in the CBD of major cities on the east coast fell to a fifth or less during the height of the lockdowns (Kurmelovs 2020). This follows similar patterns of pedestrian and transport movement in major cities around the globe. For example, in London, Moscow, New York, Singapore and Milan, mobility dropped down as close to as 10% of trips during the peak of the pandemic (March 3May 5, 2020) (Statista 2020). On a positive note, a 28.3% decline in carbon emissions was recorded in Australian cities during April 2020 (Harvey 2020). The unprecedented shifts in daily urban life have prompted urban researchers and thinkers to explore ‘what a future city could look like’ (Cayford 2020). By recapturing many old debates around city structure, density, housing, social fabric, public/private space and parks, COVID-19 has compelled us to rethink how urban design and policy can transform as well as offer a more resilient and ‘pandemic-safe’ urban form. One of the key debates on post-COVID-19 cities has triggered on the preferred urban form to address the current and future crisis with enhanced resilience – compact cities or low-density suburbia? Several scholars have underscored low-density housing to practice social distancing as well as reinvigorating suburban centres with a cultural shift to working from home. The severe risk of transmission and high population death rate of some hyperdense cities