In an article published this week in Cities and Health, UBC planning experts Jordi Honey-Rosés and Erick Villagomez discussed the implications of these adjustments in urban planning plans and area design. Together with other researchers from Chile, China, Mexico, India and Spain, they tested the measures taken in primary cities to deal with the pandemic and how these efforts have contributed and continue in urban life.
Researchers say the pandemic is transforming urban construction, design, energy flows, mobility patterns, housing preferences, green spaces and transportation systems. Many of these adjustments would possibly be temporary, while others would possibly be permanent.
“In some cases, peoples are accelerating the implementation of adjustments they already had on the works, such as the deployment of planned cycling infrastructure, street calm projects or sidewalk redesign. In other cases, planners and neighbors make things up as they go. said Honey-Rosés, associate professor at the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning.
Erick Villagomez, a part-time lecturer at the school, noted the decrease in pedestrian traffic related to COVID-19 advertising activity. According to Google’s recent maximum mobility report, retail and recreational mobility in Canada is still about 17% below average grades january through February.
Although this rate continues to rise slowly, relief in pedestrian traffic to date has already had a significant effect on many local businesses, many of which have had to close indefinitely. It is very likely that this trend will continue until a viable solution to the pandemic is found,” Villagómez said.
In the long run, researchers see additional changes, and cities are likely to put in place pedestrianization projects and temporary and cheap agreements. “Streets may want to be redesigned. With the take-off of grocery shopping online and delivery of food home, there is a massive demand for street parking, not only to meet new delivery needs, but also to free up space for pedestrians,” Honey-Roses said.
They rise that the physiognomy and kindness of the peoples that have tourism will change, either negatively or positively. Businesses may continue to enjoy the challenges, but there is a greater interest in creating a more powerful pedestrian environment. In Toronto, for example, the City has accelerated plans to install bike infrastructure along popular Danforth Avenue as a component of COVID-19 support plans.
In addition, there is now a greater appreciation of the importance of providing opportunities to nature readily available and a variety of recreational activities. Cities can revisit the prospect of unused spaces, such as abandoned land and construction ceilings, increasing the impressive number of underutilized roofs in many cities that can become rooftop gardens.
Over time, researchers say that our sense of position and area can be permanently transformed. “The public area can still be a position of social interaction, but it can be more complicated for spontaneous and casual people. The pandemic would possibly restrict our ability to expand new relationships, especially among foreigners,” Honey-Rosés said.
On the plus side, the pandemic has given us an unprecedented opportunity to read about the links between urban plans, the public area and well-being, he added. “Our long-term city is not predetermined, but it will be the result of express public decisions. We expect citizens to communicate with their leaders and combine with developing plans and policies to build healthier cities in this crisis and beyond.”
Villagomez, who has written extensively on the implications of transforming villages to comply with popular protocols of social estrangement of 1.80 meters, points out that the spaces we inhabit have been configured over millennia on the basis of much smaller dimensions, being 3 to 4 feet the maximum common. .