Epidemics, Planning and the City: a Special Issue of Planning Perspectives
This special issue of Planning Perspectives, initiated during the first Covid-19 lockdown in the UK in 2020, examines how urban planning has historically addressed the challenges of infectious disease epidemics.
It set out to draw together historical explorations of processes, actions, and strategies developed to contain, isolate, and treat diseases, inviting contributors to respond to the following questions: How have cities been transformed by epidemics throughout history? How have urban governance and planning practice evolved in response to these challenges? And what lessons can we draw from past practices about their effectiveness or limitations?
The issue brings together new research from cities worldwide, including Buenos Aires, Mumbai, and Adelaide. Its eight papers provide varied accounts of planned responses to a range of epidemics/ pandemics, from Cholera to Tuberculosis, Typhoid, Malaria Dysentery and Smallpox. All shed light on how urban strategies were shaped by historical understandings of disease causes and sources, revealing intriguing connections between medical and planning historical. They also reveal that these strategies often reflected social and cultural biases, reinforcing societal divisions by class, caste, or moral judgments of disorder and dirt.
Ultimately, the special issue provides a valuable perspective on the role of health in global planning history. Edited by Professor Juliet Davis, it was published in 2022.
