Pandemics and the built environment: A human–building interaction typology

Abstract

Surveys of urban history from ancient times to the present reveal a continuum of collective responses to pandemics ranging from quarantine facilities and monitoring the spread of disease to building new wastewater networks. The contemporary COVID-19 pandemic includes new digital tools and techniques that supplement (and sometimes replace) the existing analogue responses, while raising new ethical issues with respect to privacy. A typology of pandemic responses in cities is created, based on human-building interaction (HBI) principles. This typology can be used to compare and contrast analogue and digital responses relating to distancing, monitoring and sanitising. It provides a summary of a wide range of individual and collective implications of pandemics and demonstrates the indelible connections between pandemics and the built environment. In addition, the typology provides a tool to interpret some of the opportunities and drawbacks of digitalising cities.