Cities

With lockdowns across the world reducing traffic, air quality experts have been eagerly awaiting the statistics for March and April 2020. Many hopeful predictions of drops in pollutants such as nitrogen oxide have been made. So, what have we learned from the great economic pause?

How can we improve our access to the real-time information that helps cities survive a crisis? What can urban planners do to reduce the impact of a crisis on disadvantaged communities? How should public services be designed to cope with surges in demand?

We wanted to investigate how lockdowns and the pandemic, restricting people’s movements to their neighbourhoods, highlighted the benefits and shortcomings of those neighbourhoods and the possible consequences for future design.