People’s needs will enter center stage

Pandemics have a history of accelerating change.

Change does always incorporate chance. Now, it’s about each and every one of us to embrace and master.

From the Athens plague in 430BC, which drove profound changes in the city’s laws and identity, to the Black Death in the Middle Ages, which transformed the balance of class power in European societies, to a series of devastating global cholera outbreaks in the 19th century that gave birth to a new, modern sewerage system for London city: 

Global epidemics did always have a significant impact on the innovation of technology and social behaviour.

With the current dialectic development towards densification – the push towards cities becoming more concentrated, which is seen as essential to improving environmental sustainability – and disaggregation, the separating out of populations, which is one of the key tools currently being used to hold back infection transmission, the question of how #Covid19 will impact urban lifestyle is yet to be answered.

One potential impact of coronavirus may be an intensification of digital infrastructure in our cities. Another scenario might be the increasing popularity of remote work in rural outskirts or a newly rising willingness to openly share personal data for the sake of common health – time will tell. For now, it’s about each and everyone of us to embrace and master.

Inspired by the following Guardian article

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