Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Dec 20:749:142391.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142391. Epub 2020 Sep 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management

Ayyoob Sharifi  1 , Amir Reza Khavarian-Garmsir  2
Affiliations
Review

The COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on cities and major lessons for urban planning, design, and management

Ayyoob Sharifi et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Since the early days of the COVID-19 crisis the scientific community has constantly been striving to shed light on various issues such as the mechanisms driving the spread of the virus, its environmental and socio-economic impacts, and necessary recovery and adaptation plans and policies. Given the high concentration of population and economic activities in cities, they are often hotspots of COVID-19 infections. Accordingly, many researchers are struggling to explore the dynamics of the pandemic in urban areas to understand impacts of COVID-19 on cities. In this study we seek to provide an overview of COVID-19 research related to cities by reviewing literature published during the first eight months after the first confirmed cases were reported in Wuhan, China. The main aims are to understand impacts of the pandemic on cities and to highlight major lessons that can be learned for post-COVID urban planning and design. Results show that, in terms of thematic focus, early research on the impacts of COVID-19 on cities is mainly related to four major themes, namely, (1) environmental quality, (2) socio-economic impacts, (3) management and governance, and (4) transportation and urban design. While this indicates a diverse research agenda, the first theme that covers issues related to air quality, meteorological parameters, and water quality is dominant, and the others are still relatively underexplored. Improvements in air and water quality in cities during lockdown periods highlight the significant environmental impacts of anthropogenic activities and provide a wake-up call to adopt environmentally friendly development pathways. The paper also provides other recommendations related to the socio-economic factors, urban management and governance, and transportation and urban design that can be used for post-COVID urban planning and design. Overall, existing knowledge shows that the COVID-19 crisis entails an excellent opportunity for planners and policy makers to take transformative actions towards creating cities that are more just, resilient, and sustainable.

Keywords: Air quality; COVID-19; Environmental factors; Pandemics; Smart cities; Urban planning.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Term co-occurrence map.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Acuto M. Engaging with global urban governance in the midst of a crisis. Dial. Hum. Geogr. 2020;10(2):221–224. doi: 10.1177/2043820620934232. - DOI
    1. Aguliera E., Nightengale-Lee B. Emergency remote teaching across urban and rural contexts: perspectives on educational equity. Inform. Learn. Sci. 2020;121(5/6):471–478. doi: 10.1108/ILS-04-2020-0100. - DOI
    1. Ai S., Zhu G., Tian F., Li H., Gao Y., Wu Y., Liu Q., Lin H. Population movement, city closure and spatial transmission of the 2019-nCoV infection in China. medRxiv. 2020 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.04.20020339v1 - DOI
    1. Aloi A., Alonso B., Benavente J., Cordera R., Echániz E., González F., Ladisa C., Lezama-Romanelli R., López-Parra A., Mazzei V., Perrucci L., Prieto-Quintana D., Rodríguez A., Sañudo R. Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on urban mobility: empirical evidence from the city of Santander (Spain) Sustainability (Switzerland) 2020;12(9)
    1. Baldasano J.M. COVID-19 lockdown effects on air quality by NO2 in the cities of Barcelona and Madrid (Spain) Sci. Total Environ. 2020;741 - PubMed