COVID-19 impact on city and region: what’s next after lockdown?

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 is unique in that it is spread through everyday contact with other people. Therefore, social protective measures, beyond medical protective measures, such as social distancing, lockdowns, border closures, and human tracing are initiated to control the spread of COVID-19. Such responses have produced secondary issues such as drastic changes in people’s way of life and work, housing instability, economic shock, and privacy issues. This paper examines the four domains of urban and regional issues related to the secondary impact of COVID-19, including (1) social distancing, urban structure, community, and density; (2) housing affordability; (3) lockdowns, border closures, reshoring, and regional economic recovery; and (4) smart city technology, contact tracing, and privacy. The following six recommendations have been proposed. First, institutional and cultural factors are more important than urban features, such as population density. To handle infectious diseases such as COVID-19, it is important to build systems, technology, infrastructure, and urban structures that can strengthen resilience instead of implementing a directionless policy of dispersion. Second, it is necessary to improve accessibility to essential services at the community level, including medical facilities and food supply. Third, continuous effort should be made to boost housing affordability, as it is directly related to people’s basic life. Fourth, measures are needed to protect those people who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. There is also the need to restore global trade and economic relations. Fifth, since data technology-based COVID-19 control raises the human tracing and privacy issue, we must ensure the principles of privacy management, such as transparency and voluntary consent, are being met. Finally, since COVID-19 is spread through people, individuals may become anxious and fearful of others without grounds; this may increase prejudice and hatred, including xenophobia. Significant social effort is needed to overcome such ill-defined anxiety and fear and maintain a healthy civil society.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• density
• community
• housing
• regional economy
• privacy
• smart city
• urban and regional planning

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 When observing the fatality rate of COVID-19, the measures of more rapid and stronger response to controlling spread, early detection and treatment should be taken into account.

2 For SARS-CoV, there are cases that assume the spread through air on the ninth floor of Metropole Hotel and Amoy Gardens housing complex in Hong Kong.

3 There are five categories of border closure that include (1) exports and imports; (2) travel; (3) legal immigration; (4) illegal immigration; and (5) cross-border shopping etc.

4 In the past three months, during which COVID-19 swept around the world, work from home and online classes were activated. As an effect, the number of users of Zoom, a video communication company, increased from 10 million to 200 million, a 20-fold growth. There also was a large jump in other communication applications based on social media and the Web (Mobile Index, 2020).

5 Litman (2020) argues that the crowding (number of people per interior space area)) within a city, rather than its density (number of people per land area), is closely related to COVID-19. Furthermore, he states that the high number of confirmed cases in large cities, like Chicago, New York City and Seattle, is largely due to global network (major travel hubs and centres of trade, tourism and migration), rather than population density of those cities.

6 Homeless people without proper shelter have also been at a great risk of being exposed to COVID-19.

7 The use of personal information is essential in various smart city services and applications such as smart home, smart healthcare, and smart parking. Therefore, privacy-related debates have continued in smart city technologies and businesses. Researchers presented various technical approaches to minimize the privacy risk such as data minimization, data anonymization, encryption, and anonymous/pseudonymous credentials (Eckhoff & Wagner, 2018).

8 In severe cases, it may lead to racism or nationalism.