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Lara Ocon, a local resident who works in marketing, said life has become more peaceful in the cosmopolitan district since Spain implemented strict social distancing orders on March 14 to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.
“I spend weekends sunbathing with a book … there is something very nice about a slower pace and a more local lifestyle,” Ocon told Reuters.
Before closing, he said, he had a busy social life and traveled extensively abroad for work; In January alone, he flew to Colombia, Iceland, and the Netherlands.
“This pause makes me think that, really, that lifestyle is absolutely crazy,” he said.
As city dwellers around the world are forced to stay closer to home, some architects are rethinking urban infrastructure to promote a more local lifestyle and help people adapt to the post-pandemic world.
Harm Timmermans, owner of the Netherlands-based Shift architectural urbanism, said he was inspired by his own shopping experience in Rotterdam when he came up with the concept of a pandemic-friendly “hyperlocal micromarket”.
“On the first day of the Dutch closing, I went to the supermarket and realized that they are the weakest link in terms of social distancing: the rules are very difficult to maintain there,” he said by phone.
But with local markets closed, many people had no choice but to confront the city’s supermarkets, he said.
So Timmermans created a simple 16-square grid design for a small market that can be quickly and inexpensively assembled in public squares, allowing people to shop locally while still following social distancing guidelines.
Each micro-market consists of only three stalls, each of which sells a different type of product, organized around the network, which has a maximum of six customers at a time.
The stalls have separate counters for ordering and picking, and the market has one entrance and two exits. “Smaller and friendlier markets are needed at more points in cities and towns … this could apply to most Western societies,” Timmermans emphasized.
Local markets may also be essential for the city’s poorest, so they must remain open even during pandemics, the architect said.
“In some places, markets are still cheaper than supermarkets. So keeping markets accessible can help vulnerable groups,” he said.
EQUAL PARKS
The idea of organizing urban infrastructure around the principles of social distancing also underpins a new maze-like design for a crowd-free public park by Studio Precht, an Austrian-based architecture studio.
Its Parc de la Distance was intended as a proposal for a vacant lot in Vienna, but could be replicated on any parcel of unused urban land of any size, the architects said.
The trails in the park are 8 feet (2.4 meters) apart, with 35-inch (90-cm) hedges dividing them, allowing visitors to experience the benefits of green space while staying at a safe physical distance.
But not only public areas could be remodeled by the impact of the coronavirus.
Since many predict that the pandemic will result in more people working from home even after closings are lifted, the race is in the process of redesigning domestic spaces.
“People spend less time flying, driving and traveling daily and more time with their families, cooking, baking and, yes, even working more than ever before,” Australian design firm Woods Bagot said on its website.
Earlier this month, the company launched its Split Shift Home design aimed at helping parents who work from home while sharing parents’ responsibilities.
The unit has features like moveable walls, a fruit and vegetable growing area, and additional office and food storage spaces.
Compactness
Health groups like the World Health Organization say that life in the city can make residents vulnerable to communicable diseases such as tuberculosis due to overcrowding and lack of ventilation, and diseases transmitted by water and vectors such as dengue.
But UN-Habitat, the UN agency for housing and urban development, says more compact cities can also help prevent contagion because residents have easier access to health care facilities.
“Certainly measures such as self-isolation, staying home and practicing social distancing are more difficult in a very compact city environment,” said Esteban León, head of the UN-Habitat City Global Resilience Program.
“However, compact cities provide benefits even in a crisis like this, for example, access to basic services and medical care,” he said in comments emailed.
“The benefits of a well-planned compact city include shorter travel times, cleaner air and less noise and the consumption of fossil fuels and energy,” added Leon.
Several city leaders are already working to create physically closer urban communities.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said she points to a “15-minute city,” where most people’s daily needs are a short walk, bike ride, or public transportation trip.
And on March 25, the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, announced a plan of 4.4 million euros (S $ 6.8 million) to make the city more suitable for walkers and cyclists under the rules of social distancing.
It includes pavement expansion, the creation of an additional 21 km (13 miles) of bike lanes and 12 km (7.5 miles) of pedestrian streets.
‘TRY AND FAILURE’
Strengthening local services to reduce travel would reduce the spread of the infection somewhat, but not entirely, said Christos Lynteris, a medical anthropologist at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
“Somehow (the virus) would get out there, it only takes one person to spread it from one area to another and then it is transmitted to the community,” he said.
However, disease and disease control have had a massive impact on urban planning throughout history, and that continues to this day, he said.
Sara Jensen Carr, an assistant professor of architecture at Boston’s Northeastern University, said the outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever resulted in the construction of underground sewage systems and green spaces such as New York’s Central Park.
“The severity of these illnesses encouraged urban planning, engineering and public health departments to join,” he said.
But Carr also cautioned that while the new coronavirus has so far resulted in more people walking and working from home, those changes may not be permanent.
“People may decide that driving is safer than taking public transportation, and there will be more pressure to cede that space to cars again, which would be detrimental to our health,” he said.
Mr. Timmermans of Shift Architecture Urbanism urged flexible thinking, noting that we are still at the beginning of the process of reinventing cities.
“We are in a very experimental stage,” said the architect. “There will be a lot of trial and error, but the notion of local will definitely be very important.”
REUTERS
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