Implications of the Covid-19 Pandemic: Canvassing Opinion from Planning Professionals

ABSTRACT

By the end of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had exceeded 83 million cases worldwide. Given the shared origins of planning and public health, new living and social conditions have prompted an interest in how urban planning could respond to the pandemic’s associated implications. In 2020, a national online survey Plan My Australia was conducted among planning experts (n = 161), in part, to identify new challenges facing urban planning and design due to the pandemic. The findings reported here revealed that many experts identified better planning for future pandemics in Australia could require some reconsideration of city size, urban density, self-sufficiency, public transport use, open space provision and housing design.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban planning
• urban design
• health
• pandemics
• Public Open Space

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. We use the term urban planning broadly to encapsulate regional planning, urban design, landscape architecture and architecture.

2. Please note we have minimally edited the comments for grammatical purposes and/or clarity.

3. Approval to conduct this component of a larger research project was provided by the University of Western Australia following its ethics review and approval procedures.

4. The term ‘megacities’ refers to cities with a population of over 10 million, however respondents used the term to refer, in some cases, to Melbourne and Sydney which are approximately half that size.

5. Respondents made frequent reference to varying urban densities (e.g. ‘low density’) however what these terms mean precisely connote varies. As a general guide, in the Australian context, low density (net density) is generally less than 40 dwellings per hectare, medium-density between 40 and 100 dwellings per hectare, 100 dwelings per hectare or above is high density.

6. Nonetheless, such commentary was offset by a small number of respondents who were ‘disturbed by isolationist approaches.’

7. One problem facing planners and urban designers is the legacy of urban growth has already entrenched many of the spatial conditions for pandemics to spread.

8. Nonetheless, in Australia most clusters were in cities, and lockdowns after the first wave in Australia focused on particular areas of cities. Moreover, small regional centres in Australia had few if any cases of COVID, even during the first wave.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DP190101093].