How COVID-19 might improve life in our cities?
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As the world responded to the gripping challenges thrown at us by COVID-19, a strange phenomenon began to occur.
The Twittersphere soon became flooded with random animal sightings in cities all over the world.
Wild Turkeys were spotted at a playground in West Oakland, California. Jellyfish were bobbing in the canals of Venice, Italy. There were also reported sightings of Sika Deer exploring the subways and city streets of a locked-down Nara in Japan.
It quickly became clear that the pandemic was rapidly transforming our cities. Humans were no longer allowed outside, and Mother Nature was reacquainting herself with areas we had worked so hard to distinguish and separate from the natural world.
But aside from animals wandering our empty streets, it is expected that COVID-19 will continue to usher in changes far more monumental and life changing. The biggest of these changes being space and how we reconceptualise it.
Across the world, increasing space has been a primary tactic in reducing the spread of the coronavirus. Contactless customer experiences, social distancing and redefining public spaces have all been manifestations of our pandemic response.
Consider the rapid shift to working from home – this article is literally being written in a spare room in Bacchus Marsh rather than our studio in Abbotsford.
For many years now, privacy and personal space within an office setting has been steadily decreasing, notably with the rise of open plan offices. The idea of an open plan office was to remove barriers between coworkers, creating a stronger sense of community and collaboration. An open plan office also means there is very little between you and the germs of every other person in the office.
According to numbers provided in developer Mirvac’s half yearly report, the amount of space afforded per person in modern offices has decreased from 25.4 square metres in 2001 to just 8.0 square metres per person in their new developments.
Janet Pogue-McLaurin, principal and workplace leader at design and architecture firm Gensler, echoes this sentiment. In an interview with Recode, she believes employees that do return to the office will want more space.
“Densification will take a hiatus…We’ll shift to, ‘How do we dedensify to create the physical distancing that we now need to have?’”
This is just one of the ways offices will have to adapt to the new normal, leaving the array of office buildings in our cities empty and facing an uncertain future.
As cities continue to adapt, our public transport systems will also undergo a period of unexpected change.
Over 71% of Melburnians use public transport, but the pandemic has raised fresh concerns around the safety of our transit systems. According to market research company Roy Morgan, the public transport systems in Australia’s largest cities including Melbourne are “already over-loaded” and “usage of public transport does correlate to population size.”
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levin argues that with crowded trains, trams and buses, the need for space, and lots of it, will fundamentally change public transport for the foreseeable future.
“It is practically impossible to follow social distancing guidelines on peak hour public transport…”
In May of this year, Transport for New South Wales announced that there would be a 75 per cent reduction in public transport capacity to comply with the new social distancing protocol. Though it remains to be seen if other states will follow suit, this step has provided a brief glimpse into the future of our mass transport systems.
But like all challenges, the changes that follow are dependent on how one responds to them.
Take the United Kingdom for instance, where Transport for London and London Living Streets recently unveiled a Central London Footways Map that provides information about walking in the capital.
Through the digital and physical map, Transport for London is keen to support locals who have embraced walking in their daily routines. The map helps Londoners take advantage of the recent Street Space for London Plan, where 22,500 square metres of temporary extra pavement space has been provided to ensure safe, social distancing while exploring the city.
In New York City, it was recently announced that 10,000 Streateries (restaurants using street space) and 87 open streets would be made permanent.
Closer to home, in New South Wales, the recent “Streets as Shared Spaces Grants” program was introduced to support temporary activation projects that would enable communal improvements across the state during the pandemic and beyond.
Grants were issued to projects that did a variety of things, such as activate high streets to create better quality public space, supporting physical distancing requirements while encouraging safe social connection and attracting people back into public spaces in a safe way where appropriate.
This led to a number of successful applications.
These included temporary road closures to create a public square, transforming car park spaces into pop-up dining areas and the reallocation of streets for cycling and pedestrian use.
Tony Matthews, Senior Lecturer in Urban and Environmental Planning at Griffith University outlines that the immediate space around us has become more significant as a result of the pandemic. Not being able to travel as far or move as easily means that our local community and how we engage with it has a far bigger impact on our daily experiences.
“Residents are engaging more closely with their own neighbourhoods at the moment. This allows them to reconsider their local sense of place.”
Placemaking, evident in the above projects, allows us to create spaces with purpose. It ensures that all stakeholders – especially the local community – feel connected to the space being created. Developing community sentiments of love and belonging in projects such as these ensure places flourish long after its implementation.
This cocreation of the future – between residents, policy makers and beyond – is now fundamental. COVID-19 has dramatically altered our reality and caused everyday interactions – from shaking someone’s hand to drinking from a public water fountain – to become threatening.
We know that our lives and cities, as a result, have fundamentally changed. But a focus back on space and the role it plays in our daily lives could end up being exactly what we and our cities might need.
Forced apart, placemaking in our cities and communities provides us with a voice in how we bring ourselves back together. From flourishing shopfronts to busy streets, it was human activity that gave our cities life.
We have the power to bring that life back – reimagined in a different way, in a different space.
We believe urban design should be more human-centred and inclusive to enhance social cohesion, give people a strong sense of belonging to place, and de-risk important decisions in how cities are created.
Find out more about how Local Peoples can help with your placemaking projects.
