COVID-19 and the Future of Urban Life

Abstract

hosted a colloquium series at which faculty and graduate students presented their work related to COVID-19. The discussion spanned a wide range of topics around urban form, economic productivity, design, food justice, housing and displacement, political movement, and social control both in the context of countries in the Global South and the U.S. This White Paper contains six essays originated from the colloquium, each bringing a unique vision of how the COVID-19 pandemic is currently shaping and will continue to shape our cities in the future and what lessons we can learn from it.The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unimaginable adversity, with nations across the globe devising ways to cope with the loss of life, economic productivity, and social fabric. Due to the agnostic nature of the virus, no facet of society, whether in the Global North or South, has been left untouched. As beacons of economic and social agglomeration, the pre-pandemic city, in particular, has seen a rapid transformation, in often unforeseen directions. Local businesses have shuttered, while large technology companies have thrived; offices have closed, while their adjacent streets have been opened for active mobility and social activities; apartment rents have decreased, while single-family home prices have increased; the underprivileged have been adversely affected by both the virus as well as the economic reality of the pandemic, while the affluent have been largely untouched in both health and economy. Responses to COVID-19 in various nations have only exacerbated existing socioeconomic inequities, and, expectedly, not all federal, state, or local responses have been beneficial to all strata of society. This white paper focuses on several core themes that have evolved over the course of the pandemic and have behaved differently across geographies: (1) urban economics and equity (2) social and economic power dynamics, and (3) strategies to preserve urban social and economic systems.The first two essays, by assistant professor Sai Balakrishnan and doctoral student Liubing Xie, initiate the conversation with two cases in the Global South, India and China, respectively. Balakrishnan's piece brings attention to the issue of global urban inequality revealed by COVID-19 through India's agrarian-urban spatial rift, as well as the undocumented farm workers essential to the food supply chain in the U.S., while Xie's essay illustrates the practice of mobility control and community surveillance in Beijing as a means to contain the virus. In the following essay, Professor Karen Chapple, Chair of City and Regional Planning, examines the potential residential and business displacements and replacements due to COVID-19, arguing that despite the heuristic narrative of inner-city resurgence by knowledge workers, it will likely strengthen the existing trends of urban inequality and displacement. The next essay by Zachary Lamb, assistant professor in DCRP, describes the 'resident-owned communities' (ROC) co-ops' responses to COVID-19 and shows that the social ...

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“…The pandemic and the ensuing recession caused a huge burden on state and local government budgets (Tracy et al, 2020). Responses to COVID-19 in various countries only exacerbated existing socioeconomic inequalities and, as expected, not all federal, state, or local responses had a positive effect on all segments of society (Li et al, 2022). With the challenges of the pandemic, governments around the world established various mechanisms to facilitate responses to the pandemic and ensure state functioning (Patrzałek, Gałecka, 2022).…”