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Cities Post-Covid-19

Insight into Cities Post-Covid-19

 

Anand Tamboli - Entrepreneur, Award-Winning Author, Global Speaker, Futurist to The Blue Circle

“Pandemic has proven that not everyone needs to travel to their office for work, not all the consumption is essential, and the struggle for the basic needs is still a reality for the significant population in cities. If we pay attention to these indications, we must drive the transformation along these lines.

The pandemic has allowed us to take a fresh and hard look at our city and systems and then transform them. It will be a sheer waste of such an opportunity if we don’t act on it."
 

Khee Poh Lam - Dean of the School of Architecture, National University of Singapore

“For too long, we have conceived our cities in 2D gross floor area rather than in 3D volumetric space. However, health is related to the volume for each inhabitant, both outdoor and indoor. The challenge is to rethink the 3D physical manifestation of our built environment. Besides offering visual delight, it should provide city-level ventilation by creating unobstructed urban wind paths and integrated with indoor ventilation of individual buildings to promote overall wellness while mitigating energy demands."
 

Richard Florida - Professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management

“The crisis may provide a short window for our unaffordable, hypergentrified cities to reset and to reenergize their creative scenes.

Predictions of the death of cities always follow shocks like this one. But urbanization has always been a greater force than infectious disease."
 

Robert Muggah - Founder of the Igarapé Institute and SecDev Group

“The pandemic is also accelerating deeper, longer-term trends affecting cities, such as the digitalization of retail, the move to a cashless economy, the shift to remote work and virtual delivery of services, and the pedestrianization of streets. Public transit will struggle to retain ridership without social distancing adjustments. Driverless cars and micro-mobility schemes may become increasingly vital."
 

Richard Sennett - Professor of urban studies at MIT and senior adviser to the UN on its climate change and cities programme.

“At the moment we are reducing density everywhere we can, and for good reason. But on the whole density is a good thing: denser cities are more energy efficient. So I think in the long term there is going to be a conflict between the competing demands of public health and the climate."
 

Moritz Maria Karl - Urban specialist and architect at the Berlin Institute of Technology

“The COVID-19 pandemic makes everyone question what their real needs are or what kind of basic infrastructure we need in a city. This could be an opportunity to completely rethink the way we build cities.

If you think about the city and all these needs that people have ... a very interesting way of using AI and Big Data would be to filter these needs."
 

Ivan Harbour - Architect and partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners

“I'm hoping that what [the pandemic] does is reinforce what we always felt was right about giving people access to good daylight, good air and access to green space."
 

Dominic Collett - Urban development engineer at Royal HaskoningDHV

“Perhaps it’s time to take inspiration from cities like New York and London, where much smaller spaces in central locations are highly sought after, but residents have easy access to multiple food and grocery options within walking distance of their homes, as well as to safe, spacious parks that provide an outdoor respite from smaller homes, which are well looked after by authorities.

Instead of starting with streets or houses, we started by designing a series of bicycle lanes and pedestrian paths. This community, which will have shops, workplaces, homes, a school and recreation facilities, will make it possible for people to avoid travelling to cities unnecessarily – because they’ll have everything they need within easy reach."
 

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