Reflection on Early Lessons for Urban Resilience and Public Health Enhancement during the COVID-19

Abstract

With growing impacts on public health systems and economies across the world, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, we need to reflect on some of the early lessons for urban resilience enhancement. In this paper, a brief discussion is made through several recommendations that could make our cities more prepared specially in the probable future waves of this current outbreak or potential spikes in infections or clustered cases. The experiences from global examples highlighted in this study address what has worked in the past few months at the spatial levels of communities and cities. The COVID-19 outbreak highlighted the deficiencies and shortfall across multiple sectors of the urban systems and enabled us to identify risks, challenges, and pathways to better city management. With regard to urban resilience enhancement, the negative impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak are assessed to suggest a checklist of what could be done through early preparedness. The findings are novel in ongoing research related to urban resilience and public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The early lessons here reflect on the ongoing situation of this pandemic outbreak, but could effectually help to enhance the resilience of our cities and communities, and especially addressing the protection of public health and societal well-being. The findings contribute to major sectors of urban resilience, city management, and public health. The recommendations from this study could be utilised and adapted in any context, allowing for the consideration of all-inclusive decision-making and much-enhanced planning processes.

Reflections Based on Pollution Changes Brought by COVID-19 Lockdown in Shanghai

“…The results are in accordance with those in Figure 2, i.e., only two or three small peaks were found for SO 2 , NO 2 and PM 10 , the main resource of which is fuel combustion [9,25,38]. The general increase during this period is in accordance with the "holiday effect" [46]. The small pollutant concentration peaks were mainly from cooking and traffic, whereas low concentrations were found in both O 3 and PM 2.5 .…”

“…Concentrations of these pollutants were significantly correlated with weather conditions [45][46][47]. The average temperature was about 8 to 9 • C with relatively high pressure in Shanghai in January.…”

“…Only SO 2 has significant correlations with all other pollutants, because it is mainly from fuel combustion and can attach to PM 2.5 and PM 10 [22]. The global air quality experienced a dramatic improvement throughout the pandemic of COVID-19 [34,46] because the lockdown supplied a relatively non-industrial period [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]46,47,49,50]. Isolation is an effective way to block the spread of COVID-19 [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]; however, this means that people have to be restricted to their homes or somewhere else.…”

“…The global air quality experienced a dramatic improvement throughout the pandemic of COVID-19 [34,46] because the lockdown supplied a relatively non-industrial period [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]46,47,49,50]. Isolation is an effective way to block the spread of COVID-19 [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]; however, this means that people have to be restricted to their homes or somewhere else. They are unable to go out for work, and plants have to be stopped or reduce their production.…”

“…Fujian has completed the third round of virus detection and cancelled the Mid-Autumn festival holiday in many places. Zhongshan Hospital, affiliated with Xiamen University, implemented closed management and the Tong'an District has designated several closed control areas to implement regional closures, keep people indoors and close factories [46]. Lockdown policy is proven to be effective in blocking the spread of the virus [1,6,7,45] through limiting traffic and the number of factories and parties [9,36,41].…”