Public health has shaped modern city planning since the 1800, when sanitation and overcrowding were seen to be directly linked to the spread of infectious diseases. It has, since, molded the design and architecture of cities, which is again seeing a wave of change after COVID-19.

 Today, we are witnessing global cities backing ideas like  ‘Build Back Better’ and the concept of neighbourhood cities being reshaped and adopted as ‘15-minute city’. The components which tie a city together at a smaller level like the open spaces, streets and buildings have also experienced a shift in their use and preferences. Open spaces have materialized not just as stress relievers during the ongoing pandemic, but also as spaces which improve immunity. Streets and parking lots have been rediscovered as extended public spaces while our homes have been reinvented as our workplaces, gyms, gardens in whatever capacity they can.

As discussed in the previous part of this series, non-motorized modes of mobility are being seen as a solution to make places and services more accessible while being safe. However, if we are to imagine holistic growth and resilience in our cities, we may require re-imagining our cities as a closely looped, self-sufficient system with prioritized public open spaces and a remodeled work and living architecture. The current pandemic has given us this opportunity to step back and re-align our city development priorities from- ‘productive’ to ‘sustainable’ and ‘resilient’- which has been a welcome step in the urban planning. Here we have highlighted a few ideas that are being contemplated the world over.

Idea of 15-minute city

As part of the Build Back Better movement, the 15-minute city, first announced by the Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, looks into re-building a city where everything is at a walkable or bikeable distance. This idea has been pitched by a group of 96 global mayors and city representatives as part of the C40 cities COVID recovery strategies. These C40 cities include five Indian cities of Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai along with other global cities like Hong Kong, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Paris, Melbourne, Medellin, New Orleans, Rotterdam, Seattle and Seoul.

In India, most of the educational and business zones are currently scattered across the country and are built usually away from residential settlements. As per Economic Times, an average Indian spends almost 7% of their day traveling to their office and back. The 15 min city would change these dynamics of daily commute for Indians, if implemented. This would not only improve the overall quality of life, but also reduce the national climate change burden by reducing the amount of carbon footprints these activities produce. Many of the Indian cities especially smaller cities already have shorter average trip durations given their mixed land uses.

Public Spaces and Parks as essential infrastructure

Earlier considered a leisure space, in the post-lockdown world, public spaces and parks have emerged as a necessary infrastructure in most cities around the world. As per the World Resource Institute, while countries like Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States have promoted outdoor recreational activities, in countries like India and Brazil such activities have been discouraged to promote social distancing. This is probably due to the inadequate per person open spaces that are available in these countries. According to an article by Down to Earth,  most of the Indian cities do not meet the required open space which is 10-12 square meter per person or 25-30 percent of a city area. Most Indian cities do not meet this international standard of 25 sqm per capita open space.

 While innovations like Studio Precht’s public parks designs are shaping the global demand for safer parks, their status in the Indian infrastructure remains vague and sidelined. Indian blogs like this piece by Times of India, have however suggested meaningful alternatives like crowd staggering, re-purposing of streets and  shared use of institutional open spaces and playgrounds for immediate response to meet the requirement of open spaces in the country.

Re-use of Streets and Parking Lots

With an increase in pedestrianization, streets and parking lots are being repurposed temporarily with pedestrian friendly activities, ensuring an optimum utilization of spaces left abandoned, as a result of the lockdown. The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) recently came up with guidelines for redesigning streets as a response to COVID-19. Some of the solutions proposed are the conversion of motorized streets into street markets, sidewalk extensions, pick-up and delivery zones, outdoor dining and transit lanes.

 To support local businesses, cities like New York and Vilnius have converted their street into open-air restaurants and cafes. In similar attempts, cities where streets function as market areas like Kalaw, Myanmar and most Indian cities like Bhubaneswar, Ahmedabad, Puducherry, Pune, Shimla, Kolkata, Lucknow , the streets were marked to show appropriate distancing measures while shopping or collecting essentials. The crisis response has also come from the design industry where a group of Indian architects have come up with strategies to build and navigate the new street spaces, post COVID.

The streets in cities like Lenasia in South Africa on the other hand are proving the civic function of coronavirus testing tents with enough space for waiting lines on the curbs. These measures taken around the globe are a progression towards the long fought urban design ideas of complete streets which are safe, multimodal and accessible to all.

Re-use of Building

Adaptive re-use is commonly used in disaster management wherein local buildings are converted to makeshift shelters and medical facilities. As the number of COVID-19 cases rose, there has been a huge cry for spaces that could be converted into quarantine facility centres. Lockdown has ensured, most of the public institutions like schools, stadiums, convention centres are not in function, providing use as temporary isolation wards. Schools like Kendriya Vidyalayas in India amongst many others, convention centres like the London’s NHS Nightingale Convention Centre and stadiums like the Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium have been used for this purpose. 

India also started using railway coaches which weren’t in use as wards for patients, whereas Spain, owing to the high number of deaths decided to turn their famous ice-rink and parking room into morgue facilities. Some more examples from across the globe have been attached in the Annex at the end of this document. 

Transforming Work Spaces and Offices

When the lockdown had initially started, people were forced to make space at home, to work from. This sudden and initially chaotic change in the work setting, has now led to a new working order where companies are seeing merit in the reduced real-estate and management expenses. They are giving their employees the option to ‘work from home forever’. Twitter, Facebook and Square are one of the many names of these Multinational Corporations. On 30th March, 2020, Gartner released a survey of a number of business leaders in the US, out of which 74% attested to the notion that at least 5% of the workforce will be allowed to work remotely even after the pandemic, whereas, 25% of the leaders expected 10% of the workers to work from home. Keeping the new landscape in mind, Flipspaces has launched a venture, RebootSpaces, which allows people to work from home seamlessly and have also started providing automated sanitisation booths, three sided desk partitions and foot operated automatic liquid dispensing machines.

The other offices meanwhile are adjusting to the new normal with modification in their design. Cushman and Wakefield, a global commercial real estate services firm, has introduced a new post pandemic office concept which allows the users to observe the ‘6 feet rule’ for social distancing.  Godrej Interio, in India has also received over 75 requests to advise offices on their redesigning strategies. Some of the ones which Godrej suggested are alternating lunch timings to avoid crowding, regulating loo and recreational activities in the office hours and health screening of the employees regularly.

 This change has also brought focus on our living spaces. Before the crisis- the cities we lived in and the location we were at- was seen as an extension of the apartment or house we had. The home was just a place to come back at night to many ranging from daily wages workers to the average office workers in an Indian metro city. This dynamic has shifted post lockdown, as homes have now become the safe place for every person. A balcony which was considered a luxury before the COVID is now being seen as an essential part of housing needs.

The New Infrastructure of cities

COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of flexible cities which accommodate the needs of its citizens by switching functions seamlessly. As we progress out of the COVID emergency, we find most solutions currently being taken up at national, state and city levels are short term in nature- like the Smart City Mission’s (SCM) intermediary steps in crisis handling. This has however, has given us the momentum we need to conceptualise a visioning plan for ‘sustainable’ and ‘resilient’ Indian cities.

 As our houses have taken up several roles, the policies which regulate them have become more important than ever. ​It is important to note though, that the WHO’s Manifesto for a healthy recovery from COVID-19 has prescribed improving access to open and green spaces as a method of recovery for livable cities. As an infrastructure which helps in speedy recovery from a disease while improving health and micro climate of cities, India needs to consider taking-up open space expansion as an area of focus under one of its urban improvement missions. Hence it is imperative that public and private housing, ​statutory building codes, planning norms​ specify and implement open area requirements for individual dwelling units and not only for the overall open areas.

COVID-19 has directed our efforts to build people centric cities and reassess our long term objectives and strategies as societies, cities and countries. ​The ​adaptability of ​public and private spaces ​is evolving as a response to the pandemic​ by making the cities​ functional ​f​or ​a ​recovery​.