Living conditions created under the COVID-19 pandemic situation provided a spotlight on the inadequacies of our cities for green open space.

It highlighted the critical role of public open space as an essential component of public health and brought into focus the inequity of access to green open space.

Our response post-pandemic will shape the future of our cities for the coming decades.

What has history taught us?

Public health and urban planning are interconnected where the urban environment clearly influences the health and wellbeing of individuals in a city. History demonstrates how a series of issues including rapid urbanisation, lack of sanitation, inadequate water supplies, waste collection, industrialisation and inadequate housing for the poor cause the spread of disease and create unhealthy environments. The various instances of epidemics around the world over the centuries had a significant impact on urban planning strategies. The cities evolved as a response and led to various architectural movements to improve the quality of life.

The lesson from every pandemic however, this will not be the last one.

Post pandemic, what idea of healthy and resilient cities comes to mind?

This pandemic with mandatory lockdowns made us realise the value of accessible green open spaces particularly within dense urban areas.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not just the presence of disease or sickness.

WHO also defines a healthy city as one that continually creates and improves physical and social environments and expands community resources that enable people to mutually support each other in performing all the functions of life.

A recent sourcebook, Integrating Health in Urban and Territorial Planning, launched by the WHO and UN-Habitat in 2020 provides information on ensuring human health is a key consideration for city planning.

It’s no new concept that public open spaces, specifically green spaces, have an important role to play and are effective in improving public health in urban cities. As history has demonstrated, there are several examples of how open green spaces and natural features were key elements of urban planning and design used during and after pandemics.

Is the current urban planning process favourable?

We are currently living off a past legacy of visionary planning and investment and we need a refreshed vision for greening our cities.

Cities spend years, sometimes decades, master planning, allocating budgets, procuring teams, developing designs and governing construction to realise new green open spaces. If we are to learn from the importance of responses and preparedness of past pandemics, we don’t have time for a ten or twenty year plan. If green open spaces go through the traditional urban planning process, the next epidemic will be upon us.

We require significant policy and institutional reforms based on new city shaping visions to ensure healthy environments, liveable communities and prosperous cities. We need a willingness to invest. We need new physical forms of green open space. Such advocacy will take political willpower, champions and a belief in the attainable instead of a staunchness to the status quo.

Public open spaces are never prioritised and often neglected in favour of other supposed urgencies. If we are to learn from this pandemic, we need to demand new green open spaces as a priority and not accept a slow project delivery pipeline.

How do we deliver the next generation of green infrastructure?

We need to adopt more dynamic, integrated and forward-thinking solutions to find and deliver new, accessible green open spaces. Cross-disciplinary collaboration of public policies, urban planning and design using public open spaces, parks, urban forests and integrated blue and green infrastructure are needed to make cities healthy.

To provide safe and healthy environments in which communities can live, work and play we need to think differently about the traditional use and type of public and green open spaces.

• Hybrid landscapes – Neither public nor entirely private, instead, they are shared by the community. Think guerrilla gardening such as tree plantings on sidewalks, creepers along laneways or vegetable patches within nature strips.
• Tactile urbanism: Flexible and short-term ‘pop-up’ activation projects that provide temporary change within urban environments. Think low cost, citizen-led approach to neighbourhood building such as short-term street closures for out-door dining or green initiation.
• Pedestrianisation – Well-connected public open spaces at local or neighbourhood level that are human-centric. Think street closure and permanent conversions designated completely for non-modal transportation – cycling, walking and running.
• Multi-purpose public open spaces – Adopt appropriate methods and strategies for multiple uses of public open spaces and making them at different scales of urban planning, that is, at city / zonal, neighbourhood / institutional and individual scales. Think temporary housing during global emergency conditions such as pop-up campgrounds to manage home displacement.
• Multi-level green open spaces – Ensure the quantity, quality and accessibility of green open spaces at a local level through urban planning and design including identifying underused and low-functioning sites and how they can be reclaimed. Think non-traditional places like water utility assets such as desalination plants, industrial parks, rail corridors, disused quarries and car parks.

Public heath, particularly mental well-being, continues to be a critical issue in our cities that still needs to be fought post this pandemic. Positioning public and green open space as a shared responsibility and creating a strategy that is innovative, planned, delivered and managed effectively, and prioritised will get us closer to being prepared for the next pandemic.

Let’s be fearless – prioritise health over grey infrastructure and advocate for public, green open spaces.

References

WHO | World Health Organization

Integrating health in urban and territorial planning: A sourcebook for urban leaders, health and planning professionals | UN-Habitat (unhabitat.org)

By Rachel Smithers, Integrated Design Practice Leader, Victoria & South Australia, Aurecon