Planning and Design in a Post-covid19 Environment: How can we come back stronger?
As we complete the anniversary of Covid-19, we have to acknowledge the new “normal” that all of us experiencing this pandemic have had to adapt to. Whether it be working from home, social distancing, finding ways to communicate with friends and family or others, it is inevitable that our current lifestyle has drastically changed compared to the pre-pandemic age. As we slowly emerge from the worst of the worst, it is important that we respond and react wisely both as individuals and as a community and make changes at a city scale in order to not only heal and rebuild our cities but also be prepared for the future.
Resilient design is the intent of planning in preparation for the long term, with considerations to respond to all types of disasters and forthcomings, such as climate change, heat waves, typhoons and, in this case, diseases. While pandemics are an issue mainly affecting us on a human level, changes can be made in approaches to large scale urban planning and design to help mitigate and prevent the spread and of such diseases in the first place. Here are 5 things to be considered to strengthen and plan our cities for the future as we move towards the path of recovery.
1) Address the issues of high-density subdivided housing.
Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with a density of 6,780 people per square kilometer and average of 27,400 people per square kilometer of built-up land. As a result it is inevitable that the provision of public housing is one of the city’s most prominent issues. Hong Kong’s topography and urban restrictions results in the city’s built up area being squeezed into just 24% of the city’s total land area. This results in the ever-growing concentration of vertical buildings to combat this, with more and more subdivided flats being built to accommodate the increasing demand for housing in the city.
These subdivided flats across the city provide the bare minimum in terms of shelter and comfort, resulting in people living in cramped, unventilated and poorly maintained conditions - the perfect environment for diseases to rapidly spread. While this housing issue has been especially highlighted due to the pandemic, it has been a persistent issue for many years already, especially as the demand for housing only continues to rise in a city which is running out of vacant land.
In order to alleviate the pressure for public housing and as a means to create cleaner and more hygienic living environments for everyone, more transitional housing and social housing initiatives should be introduced to curb the influx of residents in cramped subdivided apartments and to combat the long waiting time for access to public housing.
While the vertical living situation in Hong Kong won’t be stopping anytime soon, we can at least try to slow down the process and provide quick alternatives to try and reduce the strain on housing and resultantly the density of Hong Kong’s housing population.
2) Accessibility and transportation alternatives:
Hong Kong is known to have one of the most efficient and accessible public transport systems in the world, with around 8.9 million people using some means of public transport (including MTR, buses, trams, ferries etc.) to travel across the city daily in 2020. While this is something that has always been heavily encouraged within cities as a means of efficiency and a way to reduce the need for private vehicles and encourage connectivity, one drawback of this is that in the instance of a pandemic, these crowded spades become transmission hotspots and make it incredibly difficult to track and control.
Additionally, since the main modes of transportation are so extensive and heavily relied on, any issues arising within one would take a huge toll on those in the city. Since Hong Kong has been planned with a clear Central Business District, it is hard to combat the massive population flow through these transportation modes to the center of the city, especially at peak hours, however alternative planning methods such as introducing more pedestrian and bike friendly access in the business districts and spreading out central nodes of large activity may be the first step in reducing this crowd inflow.
In the future, more green and healthy alternatives to transportation should be considered such as the introduction of bike lanes and wider pathways with greening across the entire city to encourage more people to walk or bike to their destinations should the distance allow. This would not only encourage a level of social distancing but would also help us as a community be more active and also reduce carbon emissions from buses and cars. By making the city more accessible through different methods and by spreading out the location of certain business hotspots, we can reduce the amount of person-to-person contact that needs to be made to get from one location to the other.
3) Incorporate the use of green technologies
During the few months of lockdown in 2020, environmental experts noticed a clear decline in pollution levels worldwide, increased activity of wild animals, a significant drop in noise levels and light pollution, and cleaner water. These are just some of the positive impacts lockdown and lack of human activity has had on the environment. Now as we slowly start to bounce back, it is important to maintain and even continue to improve the condition of our natural environment and wildlife. Usually, the recovery period results in a sharp increase in carbon emissions which undoes all the positive impacts of the previous months, and so it is our job to stop this from occurring and work towards long-term solutions instead. The first step would be to plan all future buildings and technologies with a carbon-zero principle in mind, neglecting the use of dangerous fossil fuels and instead encouraging the use of renewable energy such as solar power and wind energy. Some additional technologies that could be incorporated into architecture and planning in the future are waste-to-energy plants, eco-concrete, vertical gardens and urban farms, heat-absorbing pavement materials etc.
In addition to all of these large scale changes, we can also work on things from a smaller scale by using rainwater collection, waste-treatment systems and introducing more public facilities such as citywide bike-sharing schemes and recycling centers for a more affordable and faster first-stage approach to reducing carbon emissions and creating a healthier environment.
4) Encourage a greener and healthier lifestyle
Encouraging a healthy and active lifestyle for citizens is also one of the most effective ways to combat diseases in the initial stage. More outdoor activity and exercise can be encouraged with the addition of more and green and open spaces within the central urban areas of Hong Kong.
Other leading world cities such as Singapore and Copenhagen do quite a good job of integrating greenery into the urban fabric, however Hong Kong is yet to do better in this aspect with the CBD still representing a concrete jungle and greenery mainly restricted to the outskirts of the city, designated parks or near waterfront recreational developments. Future development calls for wider green walkways and bike lanes to be integrated within the main urban fabric and even other initiatives such as more rooftop gardens, vertical gardens, green facades and urban farms. By making the daily walking journey for pedestrians more appealing and enjoyable, more people will willingly use these spaces. Smaller urban parks can also be added into pocket spaces within the city for people to use for activities and for better breathability within the crowded city. While these gathering spaces may not be used to their full potential during the pandemic, in the future they can be used to promote healthy activities which will in turn improve mental and physical health, and make us less susceptible to diseases.
5) Introduce Digital Technologies and Interfaces
As access to new technologies continues to develop at a rapidly fast pace, we can take advantage of new emerging technologies that encourage hygiene and cleanliness and incorporate them into our daily lives. As we create new designs for the future, we should attempt to reduce direct contact with public facilities as much as possible to maintain hygiene and reduce the risk of spreading diseases in a public environment. One solution to this would be to utilise buttonless contact, sensors and hover mechanisms in public facilities to not only reduce direct contact but also to create a more interactive experience for users that isn’t reduced to just tactile clicking. An example being hover buttons for commonly used elevators, voice-recognition as a method of security or digital logging through mobiles to help with contact tracing in the future. Taking advantage of the world's digital development and incorporating it into design will help us be prepared in the instance we need to track the spread of another disease in the future and also as an initial prevention method.
