Life in Our Cities After the Pandemic

This blog post was also published on Infobae

Throughout world history, no plague or pandemic, or even devastation caused by wars, has curtailed human need and urge to live in urban centers. The Black Death in the 14th century, the cholera epidemic in 1850s, the Spanish Flu of 1918 or the bombings that leveled cities such as Guernica, Hamburg, Dresden or Warsaw, did not stop people’s drive to rise up again and continue to experience the world around us, and to build a new path of progress and well-being.

This pandemic, too, shall pass, and cities will continue to play an increasingly vital role in its wake, as hubs of innovation and drivers of economic growth. The benefits of living in cities, which spurred and drive innovation and growth of urban centers, are difficult to replace, and will most likely become the source of solutions when the time comes to resume our big-city life.

In the short term, bringing back cities will have multiple consequences. These include, most notably, job losses and widespread economic downturn, but changes will also come in social interaction in schools, higher operating costs of mass transport systems, less crowded restaurants, theaters, museums and malls, among other city life establishments. But after a process of adjustment, like so many others experienced by humanity throughout history, cities will bounce back to their usual life style.

In our region, this will also include disadvantages or costs arising from poorly managed urbanization. The crises we were facing before this pandemic, such as problems of access to affordable housing, vehicle congestion, low-density urban sprawl, or climate change, will continue to be part of the challenges as we look ahead.

The current pandemic, as many others in history, is likely to reshape a number of aspects of city life and urban management in the foreseeable future. Cities became a feeding ground for measles, whooping cough, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases in early 19th-century. This prompted a much better urban sanitation system. The zoning codes of many cities are a direct consequence of the influenza pandemic of 1918. They were drawn up in an effort to ensure that new homes had enough natural light and air circulation to prevent the spread of disease, and inspired new regulations that later transcended these problems. Other lasting effects caused by these epidemics were the creation of health care institutions and reforms, the construction of new hospitals, and the overall increase in health care and hygiene budgets. A recent example is the measures taken in Asian countries, which moved in this direction after the SARS and MERS epidemics in 2012.

What type of impact is this new pandemic likely to have on cities? Its impact in social, economic, political and cultural terms is highly likely to usher in new trends in management of cities. These effects are probably best described with some examples.

Remote work. Widespread lockdown in much of the world has prompted a large number of companies and individuals to experiment with remote work, which has required—albeit in conditions far from ideal in many cases—rapid onboarding of employees who probably never would have telecommuted before the pandemic. The large-scale assessment of its effectiveness in terms of productivity, costs to businesses and workers, and its impact on the economy, may provide valuable inputs for the design and implementation of future labor-related policies. The effects on cities are likely to be most visible on transport systems, due to a potential drop in demand, further expansion of urban areas, with fewer commuters, increased online consumption, and in the shift in the care of individuals, with such tasks being more equally distributed between women and men.

Digital infrastructure. Future control of new epidemics will require a greater ability of cities to identify and curb their spread. In this regard, real-time georeferencing of movements of people, job dynamics and different economic activities in cities, their relationship with transport flows, among other types of data, can serve as valuable inputs to manage these problems. Many future investments in cities will surely aim to ensure the availability of infrastructure and technology needed for such purpose.  

Rethinking pre-existing crises: Poverty and climate change. Mandatory lockdown in many countries has allowed authorities to measure and assess the damage to the environment caused by poor management of the urban economy. In the four weeks leading up to March 1, carbon dioxide emissions in Chinese cities dropped by 25 percent, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). This is equivalent to annual emissions of Argentina or Egypt. Such drops are replicated in every city in the world, which proves the potential effect of better management on urban resources. The health care crisis has also shown differentiated effects based on socio-economic situation of people, and has further exposed the struggle of millions of poor people living in informal settlements or with precarious jobs in coping with the pandemic. But fundamentally, it shows that the social inclusion agenda cannot continue to be ignored, not only because it is an ethical and moral issue, but also due to its importance for the well-being of society as a whole.

While it is difficult to make accurate forecasts about the changes that this pandemic will bring about in cities, global lockdowns have raised awareness about the true forces that bring cities to life, but also the enormous needs and challenges that remain to be tackled.