Abstract
The session will present three case studies of emergency response in three megacities to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, starting with the City of Wuhan, and following with New York and Paris. Presented by Huiyi Xia, Jianying Yuan, Nankai Xia (Tongji Urban Planning Institute), Sebastien Goethals (Citilinks) and Wenjing Luo (Wuhan Planning & Design Institute), the session will share the results of a research study on the prevention and reduction of disasters in dense urban environments with complex spatial layout implications. The five presenters will have observed and analysed from February to November 2020 the gradual response and decisions taken in these three contrasted mega-cities to adapt the urban environment to a new reality. Pivotal decision-making on health infrastructure redeployment, tactical urbanism, public space design and transport policies will be analysed under the angle of urban livability. The relation between urban form, density of population and the spatial distribution of health infrastructure, green spaces and public spaces will be analysed for each urban environment. The first objective of this session is to identify the capacity of resilience of metropolitan areas to sudden edipemic and disasters and what lessons have been learned during the year 2020 in terms of urban planning and design. Tactical urbanism, street design, health infrastructure redeployment and public transport system’s requalification are a few current trends that will reshape our cities and communities. The second objective is to understand in which process of transition cities are evolving now, and how the “new normal” urban environment of 2025 may look like.
