Designing liveable cities for the future

WHEN Covid-19 hit, many of us were caught unprepared. None more so than those living in the cities.

According to a United Nations policy brief titled Covid-19 in an Urban World released on Tuesday, an estimated 90% of all reported Covid-19 cases were from urban areas.

With urban economies forming approximately 80% of global GDP, shutdown measures adopted by almost every country in the world have had a dire economic impact even beyond city boundaries.

The unprecedented shutdowns caused major disruptions to urban life and strained healthcare services. We were forced to reassess not only how we must deal with this pandemic, but prepare for other similar, or more acute, challenges that may come.

Worse, the pandemic was not the “great equaliser” as often touted during the beginning of the outbreak; in fact, it unearthed deep-rooted inequalities.

The UN report showed that the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on vulnerable groups, and where in a city a person lives and works and a person’s gender and age contributed to the severity of its impact.

The most marginalised communities, including slum dwellers, the poor, the homeless, people with disabilities, women and girls, and migrants and refugees faced greater challenges.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we need to be better prepared for the future. And for that, we need sustainable and resilient cities – cities that can withstand the impact of potential pandemics and recover quickly from the disruptions that come with them.

In order to create better cities, we need to prioritise adequate and liveable housing, public and green spaces, efficient mobility systems, better air quality, accessible public services, equitable access to healthcare, and strengthen local governments and actors.

Building resilient cities

Malaysia needs to adapt fast to reshape its urban environments in terms of new policy interventions to adapt to changes brought about by Covid-19, one of the most pressing being how those in high density areas were worst affected by the pandemic, says Think City managing director Hamdan Abdul Majeed.

Think City is a social purpose organisation with the mission of making cities more people-friendly, resilient and liveable.

“Even if there is a cure or in a post-Covid environment, we need to ensure that we are building resilience, ” says Hamdan, adding that this is achieved through redesigning housing, public spaces, infrastructure and amenities, and improving guidelines on sanitation and public hygiene.

Even prior to the Covid-19 crisis, cities were already under stress from inequality, climate change and unequal development, says Hamdan, explaining that this crisis has highlighted a lot of pre-existing issues especially in Malaysia where roughly three-fourths of the population live in urban areas.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Hamdan also points out that Covid-19 disproportionately affected vulnerable communities, the elderly, and the poor, particularly those living in cramped low-cost city housing.

Uta Dietrich, Think City lead on Social Resilience and Urban Health, explains that there are ways to “de-densify” housing by making more public space available within compact urban areas.

“If you live close together, we may need to increase public spaces around the housing area to give opportunity for recreational space.

“What we’ve seen in other countries is that some of the roads have been narrowed so that the sidewalks are much wider. This will increase the amount of public space that is available for social distancing, ” she says.

Such a policy would bring additional benefits, says Dietrich. If walking in public spaces becomes more pleasant, then this would encourage less carbon emissions as people walk rather than drive, and more physical activity is directly linked to reducing chronic diseases.

Unfortunately, public spaces in cities are not equally distributed.

“We normally see more public spaces in higher socioeconomic areas.

“We have to make sure that the B40 (low income) communities have equal access to public and green spaces, ” Dietrich says.

Although the movement control order (MCO), which began on March 18, was effective in curbing the spread of the coronavirus, it also had a pronounced effect on public mental health. Having pleasant green spaces that allow for social distancing will be very regenerative for mental wellbeing, Dietrich explains.

She also addresses a few positive ways we can reconsider transport and mobility, such as increasing the frequency of trains to de-densify public transportation. In the long term, one concept that has been promoted widely for resilient cities is the “15 minute city” where a commuter need not travel more than 15 minutes to get to work or school from his or her home. This, however, would require prioritising and investing in an efficient and accessible public transportation system.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Effective management of crises requires central coordination, says Hamdan, but it should be at the local level where effective enforcement and delivery takes place. This is why it is important to set up systems that allow local governments to respond to local needs through tailored interventions rather than having a one-size-fits-all approach

“The challenge lies in how we can ensure there is capacity at the local level to ensure that they are able to manage and overcome a crisis as well as to be in a position to build back better, ” says Hamdan, explaining that localisation in managing urban spaces refers to the role of local governments, local health departments, local welfare agencies and so on.

Hamdan says that Malaysia needs to reassess how we look at urban spaces so that we can position ourselves better for the future.

“Issues about inequality, climate change and development are going to be critical areas that we need to focus on and address.”

Managing urban health

There are two major challenges faced by Malaysia in building sustainable cities in light of Covid-19 and potential future pandemics, says physician and health policies expert Dr Khor Swee Kheng.

The first challenge is that urban planning and health planning are taking place in their respective silos without merging their expertise in an interdisciplinary way.

The second challenge is that the health system has not yet caught up with the unique challenges in urban health, like higher population density and disease outbreaks, poor nutrition and “food deserts” leading to weaker immune systems, and air pollution worsening airborne diseases.

Dr Khor observes that healthcare access in Malaysia’s urban areas is increasingly strained as a result of population growth, under-investment in health infrastructure and the unique health challenges of urban populations.

“To improve the situation, the public health surveillance system must be built in a scalable fashion with adequate surge capacity to accommodate rapidly growing cities, highly mobile populations, and mass transportation and movement networks, ” says Dr Khor.

This must include policies and measures to enable precision quarantining rather than blanket quarantines in highly populated cities.

Dr Khor explains that precision or targeted quarantining means “quarantining at the right strictness of restrictions for the right risk profile of people”, instead of a blanket one-size-fits-all “quarantine everyone in an apartment block” or “MCO for the whole country”.

“For the second step, there is an opportunity to ‘build back better’ in the form of healthier architecture, for example better ventilation and enough living space for occupants, ” he says, pointing to the Workers Minimum Standards of Housing and Amenities Act as a great place to start for all workers, both Malaysian and foreign, in urban areas.