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Epidemics, Planning and the City: A Special Issue of Planning Perspectives

The advent of coronovirus (Covid-19) has led to growing speculation in the media and, increasingly, within academic and policy debates about how cities may develop in the future in order to help mitigate the spread of the disease and, hence, reduce the risks of disruption and threat to life that it poses. Social distancing measures adopted worldwide since the start of 2020, for example, have been shown to have substantially altered the use and nature of places of work, learning, leisure and consumption, with potential implications for future land-use planning and urban design. During lockdowns periods, much of life was forced to retreat indoors, with the home becoming a nexus of domestic, caring and professional activities, technologies and relationships, raising questions about the future of domestic architecture and neighbourhood form. And yet, with the cautious easing of restrictions, public spaces worldwide have become a focus for urban life in a heightened sense, encompassing active living, play, shopping, sociability, culture and even learning, concentrating attention in the process on the potential future development of the open-air city. Social distancing measures in turn have stimulated debate about the compatibility of the notion of pandemic-proof cities of the future with the compact city model of urban form, with its high-density buildings and public transport networks, long held up as a beacon of sustainable urban development. At the same time, the growth in medical activities associated with testing for, vaccinating against and isolating the patients undergoing treatment for Covid-19 has led to the birth of new typologies in cities including mass vaccination centres, drive-through testing sites, pop-up, instant hospitals and, at least in some cities, the rapid conversion of existing land uses including sporting venues and conference centres into medical centres with special isolation units. These point, respectively, to the value of temporary use strategies and related building technologies but also of the adaptability of existing urban fabrics for cities striving to be resilient. Speculations concerning the future reflect the widespread experience of Covid-19 as a shock to the system, an unprecedented experience that poses grave new and unexpected challenges for cities, nations and the world. While Covid-19 may indeed be a new pandemic with which epidemiology and public policy have been struggling to keep pace, strategies such as social distancing and the promotion of access to fresh air, are old. They are part of a long history of response to outbreaks of infectious diseases that include cholera, plague, leprosy, tuberculosis, typhus, polio, influenza, dysentery and smallpox. Indeed, cities across the world today are replete with examples of spatial and material transformations initiated in response to the threats posed by infectious diseases to urban populations and as public health measures of one kind and another – from London and Paris’s vast sewer network to London’s Thames Embankments, New York’s Central Park and the wide avenues of Canberra and Adelaide. The aim of this special issue of Planning Perspectives, which was initiated during the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK during March 2020, is to turn to the past to explore examples of how planning (encompassing city design and planning policy) has both constructed the challenge of infectious disease epidemics and developed processes, legitimized actions and deployed strategies to contain, isolate and treat them. It is, further, to consider what can be learnt from history about the difficulties or effectiveness of particular strategies, about how planning has shaped the trajectories of other epidemics, and/or about the relationship between understandings of disease in cities and the development of planning control and regulation. The emergence and spread of diseases, as well as their tendency to remerge through sudden outbreaks through time, is, of course, contingent on the interplay of many factors which are complexly interlinked.