Signs of pandemic times: tracing the reconfigurations of urban spaces through COVID-19 signage

ABSTRACT

The ubiquitous presence of COVID-19 signage in cities during the pandemic served to promote and normalise new behavioural norms and spatial arrangements that visibly reconfigured the social and spatial dimensions of urban spaces. Through a visual exploration of COVID-19 signage, this essay examines some of the pandemic-induced reconfigurations of urban spaces in Brisbane, Australia. Drawing on a series of photographs it demonstrates how new rules and regulations imposed as pandemic response measures transformed urban spaces to facilitate disciplinary control in a manner reminiscent of Foucault’s historical analysis of plague management in European cities.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• public space
• signage
• disciplinary control
• pandemic

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Kazi Nazrul Fattah

Kazi Nazrul Fattah is an urban sociologist based at Melbourne Centre for Cities, The University of Melbourne, Australia. His work focuses on informal urbanism, urban governance and public policy, climate change adaptation, Southern cities, and international development practice.