Urban Planning and Human Development: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Reveals the Linkage

The onset and aftermath of COVID-19 can be understood as an extreme event within the context of New York City, in terms of urban planning and design, public health, and the cross-section of the two. Over the course of a few months since early March, 2020, infection rates, illness, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID-19 swept through New York rapidly. It also became apparent early on that people were not being exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus equally, nor was COVID-19 spreading over a level-playing field. In this commentary, we examine what role COVID-19 played in a “social biopsy” of long-standing structural inequity in New York City, to reveal a deep, metastasizing tumor underneath the extreme wealth. We tell the story of the historical context in low-income public and non-profit housing and urban planning in New York City leading up to the pandemic’s outbreak, how the structural inequity was built into place over time by design, how the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted our understanding of equitable and sustainable New York City for New Yorkers, and ways that the pandemic has reinforced our individual and collective sense of uncertainty in the future and distrust in a common good. We then discuss how we can recover, restore and rebuild from the urban planning and public health perspectives, for New York City and beyond. Rebuilding will require reimagining a new normal, and we suggest unique but tried-and-true, complementary and collaborative roles for community stakeholders.