Resilient Cities need Balanced Capital Investment

The impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic are still being understood, but it seems clear that this crisis will force changes in cities, physically and socially, that will echo for generations.

Central and Local Government institutions are rolling out short term economic relief packages across New Zealand. A strategy of road and rail “shovel ready” development projects is under consideration for the long term. While these approaches are an important part of a planned approach to recovery, they don’t engage with the fundamental need for change, nor the opportunity this disruption presents for the Government to implement its Living Standards Framework and rebalance New Zealand’s natural, human, and social capital, alongside its financial and physical capital.

How cities are planned has always been a reflection of cultural and technological trends, and major health crises. The cholera epidemics in the 19th century sparked the introduction of modern urban sanitation systems. Housing regulations around light and air were introduced as a measure against respiratory diseases in overcrowded European slums during industrialization. Mass transit and the automobile shape urban form, internet technology enabling working and shopping from home influences urban design priorities, and climate change pressure is forcing adaptation.

New Zealand’s pandemic response has been led by a brave and enlightened Government, and only a few outbreak clusters have occurred. But across the world, cities have been on the frontline with overwhelmed heath systems, and with daily wage earners and the urban poor suffering from lost income and a scarcity of city services and social safety nets to protect them.

Even before the current pandemic cities have needed to change significantly to meet the global goals outlined in the Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals, or New Urban Agenda. To reach these goals will require major alterations to how we build, manage and live in cities – not just change, but transformational change. Such change has seemed beyond reach, but from energy to housing to mobility, sustainable, cost-effective, solutions are at hand. The challenge has been to change people’s understanding of what’s possible and the courage to make it happen at scale.

One of the unintended consequences of this crisis has been that we have seen, quite dramatically, that radical change to our everyday lives and systems is possible. Amidst fear and uncertainty, people are seeing fragments of what a future city could look like. People across the world are breathing better air than they have in decades due to a dramatic decline in vehicle traffic and factory output. People are unwittingly enjoying “car-free street days” on a daily basis, finding that walking and biking are also viable and even preferred. Cities like Bogotá, Berlin and Mexico City have already expanded pedestrianization efforts to encourage these activities.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered urban life across New Zealand. Work from home is the new normal for many. So is walking, biking and enjoying nearby open spaces and parks. But the fate of thousands of small businesses and workers that make urban centers work is up in the air. These changes have sparked a debate about what is essential in a city, and perhaps more importantly, how cities can better respond to current and future crises. This pandemic is exposing fault lines with respect to physical infrastructure and inequalities in access to core urban services. It’s also raised questions about healthy density in cities. The most successful cities are able to achieve liveable density – a balance where benefits of agglomeration are significantly higher than the cost of congestion – as well as healthy density – a balance where the threat of a viral pandemic is built into its physical design and infrastructure.

It is the lack of access to essential service infrastructure such as water, housing, internet and health care, that has exacerbated the challenge of responding effectively to COVID-19 in modern cities.

We need to bring laser sharp focus on investing in essential infrastructure for better health, wellbeing and resilience for New Zealand’s urban populations. This involves identifying and investing in high-risk locations, including poor and under-resourced communities. It can also mean building infrastructure that is intentionally geared towards a low-carbon future.