Post covid urban design consideration

Coronavirus Disease 2019

All pandemic had led to reimagined or redesigned architecture and often visualise
urban design consideration as spatial medicine.

19th century New york - The wake of 1954 cholera epidemic led to tenement housing
were a set of rooms forming a separate residence within a house or block of flats.

Covid-19 virus on physical health, there are a number of associated and indirect harmful
repercussions on health including loneliness, depression, domestic violence and the
unintended consequence of people not accessing hospital.

The social isolation practices currently experienced during Covid-19 lockdown are
highlighting the importance of ‘social’ health.
There are also some beneficial consequences of lockdown to health, for example,
significant reductions to air pollution, noise pollution, traffic congestion, active travel
such as walking/cycling and a re-awakening of attitudes towards nature in cities.

In order to ensure a proper transition into post COVID-19, architects, public health
experts, and engineers are generating design guidelines to provide people with new
secure, and efficient resources.

Finding a balance between optimizing operations and keeping people safe, the
strategies tackle the built environment that surrounds us, from restaurants and
outdoor dining, to streets, offices, and retail.

Addressed to city officials, owners, and employers, the tools developed help to reopen
the world, while reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission, promoting social
distancing standards, and enhancing wellbeing.
Design considerations
Digital transformation

Digital strategies must embrace the provision of all public services in an

interconnected way.

This matters because increasingly our cities will combine physical facilities with virtual
environments and services.

These networks should not only improve the accuracy and effectiveness of disaster
response.

They will underpin an ability to respond better and faster to all the changing social and
economic needs of those who live and work in our cities.
Design should work for everyone

Former findings on pandemic were typically not implemented in city outskirts and
areas with higher proportions of poorer or more vulnerable residents.

Effective information sharing becomes essential at these times.

The communities excluded from the lessons of previous health crises typically have less
access to these information sharing networks.

In a post Covid-19 world, we have the opportunity – some may say responsibility – to
give marginalised groups equal consideration in our planning as we reshape our
communication networks and our wider cities.
Decentralise to build immunity to crisis

The surge in demand for those services caused by Covid-19 has exposed how painfully
vulnerable such centralised organisations are at times of crisis as during the outbreak
many hospitals were forced to close as the city fought to contain the disease.

Privatisation and decentralisation of public services, such as waste collection and

healthcare, have proven effective in delivering operational efficiencies.

During a crisis, decentralisation delivers another strength as it reduces the single

points of failure that make centralised systems so vulnerable.

Decentralisation should be considered to check the risks of cross-contamination

between related urban systems.
Urban development has health implications

The crisis has also given us an opportunity to rethink the relationship between urban
design and public health.

Urban design has an important role in determining the health of an urban population
but are often unclear, undervalued or ignored.

The ability to assess and mitigate the effects that development has on health should
become a new field of expertise, to help prepare cities to respond more rapidly and
efficiently in future.
Application in different levels
Offices : Using tech to build a more agile workspace

In the post Covid scenario, the reconfigured open office will seat fewer people, as the
space allocated to each employee has increased with larger workstations and higher
partitions, in keeping with social distancing norms.

Agile workspaces like hive zones and jump spaces have been redefined.

Close collaborative and communal spaces have made way for staggered seating;
workstations are connected through digital tools that allow multiple users to work
simultaneously and attend video conferences from their own stations; sliding panels
create dynamic working and meeting spaces; and single occupancy pods and phone
booths have been provided.

Technology embedded in furniture allows workstations to be truly plug-and-play.

The reception, an area of face-to-face interactions has been replaced by a virtual
reception that relies on smart technology and digital screens to convey information to
visitors.

The carrying capacity of lifts, which lead up to a reception, is reduced to a fourth.

Minimise touch points like blinds, light switches, and toilets. Simple sensor-activated
lights and faucets and smart window shades can be used, instead.

Navigation which earlier was more free-flowing, a post Covid office must stagger entry
and exit times to decongest arrival and departures.

Multiple shifts for lunch hour can be formulated to control the number of people
gathered near the pantry at a particular time. Creating separate lanes for to and fro
movement also decreases chances of transmission of pathogens.
Street market : Managing customers with DIY, low-cost design
solutions
Pali Market in Bandra west — this market includes everything from restaurants to a
mutton shop and vegetable and fruit vendors on a 200-metre stretch that connects St
Andrews Road on one end, to Dr BR Ambedkar road, on the other.

The market is envisioned as grid of six-foot circles. Blue indicates pedestrian flow, green,
a sanitation station, and yellow, zones for customers to wait. The queuing circles have
numbers on them to indicate the sequence of movement to approach the vendor.

A polycarbonate sheet barrier for their vegetable vending cart which also provides a
separate space for the person selecting the vegetables and the person paying for it. A
window on one side of the barrier can be swung open to complete the payment
process.
Strategies to enable physical distancing includes insertion of sanitisation stations and
planters as partitions.

A simple location-based application which tracks density (and not personal data) to
encourage citizens to check the live feed of public spaces before going, hence
empowering them to know the risks beforehand and make informed decisions.

The modular approach is scalable and can easily be applied to street markets, parks
and other public spaces around the city.

Such a grid of circles has been already implemented at Bhaji Galli, a market in Grant
Road with the assistance of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation officials.
Classrooms : Use outdoor spaces smartly to decongest

A design that encourages indoor and outdoor connect can easily be reconfigured to
address the concerns raised by the pandemic.

The model is based on the British School, New Delhi

First principle is to disperse crowds and manage flow of movement distributing the
entry across three gates thereby reducing traffic to 33%.

Each entry point is equipped with sanitation chambers accommodating ultraviolet

baggage scanner and sanitation mats.

Student movement is channelled by designating a separate staircase for each entry

floor.
The break-out space near a classroom – any space that can be converted to suit our
needs using furniture or other design products – is perfect for reconfiguration.

An outdoor court cuts the density of children indoors and evens the spread across the
break-out space.

Each year group is assigned four to six classrooms with an attached break-out space.

A shaded courtyard can also be used as a break-out space for the extendable
classrooms.

Various clusters [or sections] can use them at different points in time during the day.

The indoor classroom itself is reconfigured keeping social distancing norms of at least
1.8m between students.
Transparent shields can be employed to reinforce the distancing.

Semi-covered areas in outdoor spaces can easily be converted to classrooms, but the
real advantage of such a space can only be experienced in outdoor courtyards
designed for maximum shade, given our weather conditions.

Adaptive strategies such as temporary shading devices and mist cooling fans would
also enhance student comfort.

Sanitation pods (with an automated sanitiser dispenser and a personal protective gear
vending machine, which provides gloves, masks on need) have been placed
strategically.

Water-cooler, which allows social distancing and at the same time doesn’t do away
with spaces of interaction.
The school incorporates sustainable design elements like self-shaded internal courts,
baolis (well-shaped seating with steps), sun shading strategies and verandas help
connect students with nature.

The provision of operable windows with sun shading encourages natural ventilation
through the classroom.

In classroom, a decreased dependence on air conditioning is desirable and natural

ventilation design techniques will help achieve this.
Residential Areas : More habitable space for good quality of life

For the model, Seelampur, a sub-district in North-East Delhi and home to migrants is
used.

At 54,000 persons per sq km, its density is more than four times that of Delhi.

At 5.6 persons per household, Seelampur has the highest average household size of any
sub-district in Delhi.

In its current form, a nine-metre wide road is the primary street, but it lacks pedestrian
facilities, and it is often overrun with traffic and crowds.

The narrow lanes (three to five-metre wide) between the buildings that abut the main
street and those on the smaller plots behind, are unpleasant for residents.
The four to five-storey high buildings on these plots (which roughly measure 125 sqm)
receive very little light and ventilation, and do not have any open space that can be
used by the community.

Even the dwellings are exceedingly small for the size of families that live there. Health
care and educational facilities, too, are almost non-existent.

A market-responsive urban renewal programme comprising plot redevelopment, plot

amalgamation and street widening, the same density can be accommodated with
better quality of life.

An increase of the built-up area, which in turn guarantees greater habitable space per
person. It would also mean wider streets with augmented infrastructure and planned
retail and commercial outlets.
Amalgamating plots would not only create larger dwellings, but also neighbourhood
amenities and open spaces.

The existing lanes and alleys should be retained for public access within these
reconfigured plots.

The main street can be given better pedestrian facilities, retrofitted with wider
footways, landscape, and seating for the public, to create a vibrant environment.