Urban planning for pandemics

In the absence of immunisation, high-quality planning and design of our cities can play an important preventative and responsive role during pandemics

By Kaitlin Bonner

Pandemics have been known to shape the course of human history, and the recent outbreak of COVID-19 is no different. What is new, however, is the concept of ‘healthy urban planning’ which has gained popularity in the last 15 years and requires those involved in urban planning and design to consider the link between their work and that of healthy behaviours and spatial equality.

Urban areas are typically considered epicentres to disease transmission, and this was the case with SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes: COVID-19. Combine this with the fact that emerging infectious diseases are now travelling faster than they ever have before, and the need to review the role of urban planning in the design for pandemic management becomes clear.

While many recounts of responses to previous pandemics exist, there have been few systematic approaches to collating the information that could facilitate speedy decision-making in a fast-changing environment. Further, urban planning and design-based responses are seldom considered in these responses, even though these features—at community, local, regional, federal and international scales—notably impact the transmission of diseases.

In early 2020, SPHERE’s Healthy Urban Environments (HUE) Collaboratory took on the challenge of undertaking a rapid review of the literature that considered health, policy, planning, and design responses to previous pandemics.

Professor Jason Prior from the University of Technology Sydney, the lead of the HUE Collaboratory, was one of the authors of this review.

“Until the recent pandemic, much focus has been on how urban design and planning can respond to noncommunicable diseases. The recent pandemic has drawn attention to the need for greater research focused on the role that urban design and planning can play in responding to communicable diseases. In the absence of immunisation, high-quality planning and design of our cities can play an important preventative and responsive role during pandemics.”

This project presented one of the first ever interdisciplinary rapid reviews, uncovering and collating pandemic responses relevant to cities from public health, urban studies, microbiology, security and emergency management, land use and environmental health, among others.

“The most important finding from this rapid review is that for such high-quality planning and design to be as effective as possible, we need to act at multiple scales, ranging from globalisation which drives city-to-city transmission, to built environment interventions and actions, through to socio-environmental factors underpinning pandemics in urban contexts,” reports Professor Prior.

“Given the need to act from these multiple scales, effective responses are only possible through cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary, and collaborative interventions. These responses need to be not only responsive in times of need but also preventive.”

There were many key findings identified in the review under their ten main themes, all of which have notable practice or policy implications (see figure 1). Some of the topics raised include the importance of local responses to ensure an effective pandemic response, the value of timing in implementing nonpharmaceutical interventions, and the acknowledgement of the significant role that socioeconomic factors play in the spread of pandemics.

“I hope that the review provides an impetus for those within HUE,

SPHERE and its partners, and the readership of the published rapid review, to give more consideration through research and practice to the role that urban design and planning can play in responding to communicable diseases, and in particular pandemics.

“It is not a matter of if we will have another pandemic, but when, and we need to be as prepared as possible, with as many preventative and responsive tools as possible, including what urban design and planning can offer. At the same time, we need to develop the cross-sectoral capacity to make this possible.”

For more information on this work or to learn more about the HUE Collaboratory, email Professor Prior at jason.prior@uts.edu.au or visit http://hue-collaboratory.mystrikingly.com