中世纪的城市是否能比现代城市规划更好地应对疫情?
我们的历史表明,流行病有力地影响着世界各地城市的“物质结构”。城市化历史的一部分就是建立和管理传染病。在城市规划和管理方面,一些最具标志性的发展,如伦敦大都会工程委员会(Metropolitan Board of Works)和19世纪中期的卫生系统,都是为了应对霍乱爆发等公共卫生危机而发展起来的。
荣誉奖| RTF作文写作比赛2020年4月
类别:中世纪城市VS现代城市
参与者:也是巴蒂亚
专业:学生
大学:印度旁遮普邦阿姆利则纳纳克·德夫大学
城市规划在预防、控制和制止流行病蔓延方面发挥着重要作用。在考虑流行病解决方案时,首先想到的是“去致密化”。重新思考密度管理是在大流行世界中长期生存的关键。一种传统而短视的解决方案包括城市的扩张而不是密集,这将不得不与更好的公共交通连接在一起。但我们必须记住,我们也将在气候变化和可持续性的背景下权衡这些变化。就连崇尚效率和运动的勒•柯布西耶(Le Corbusier)也明白人与人之间碰撞的价值。它赋予城市活力和世界主义以效果。密度是城市运转的首要因素;这是他们成为经济、文化和政治强国的主要原因。因此,像伦敦那样由村庄组成的分散城市,或市长哈达尔戈(Hadalgo)的15分钟巴黎(15 minutes Paris),都是不可行的。 Rather than “de- densification” urban centers should focus on healthy density. As a matter of fact, density is the precondition for effective urban service provision, and far too many people in cities today lack access to basic services. It’s the lack of access to essential services such as water, housing and health care, that has exacerbates the challenge of responding effectively to pandemics in cities. Poor access makes lockdowns orders impossible to comply with in some places. On this account, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has proposed decentralizing or “deconstructing” her city so every neighborhood has a mix of stores, homes, office buildings and other uses, and residents can satisfy most of their needs within a 15-minute walk. If you create more walkable neighborhoods and put services and jobs in those neighborhoods, then perhaps you can alleviate the extreme density and crowdedness you have in various systems” such as public transit. Policymakers can focus on creating more affordable housing to prevent chronic stress caused by housing instability and long commutes, as well as rental assistance programs. With stable housing, residents have a place to hunker down when ordered to shelter in place during a disease outbreak and people who would otherwise be homeless can avoid the risks from staying in crowded temporary shelters. Another paramount problem is that we have made public health all about specific diseases and germs. We should not try to think of some peculiarity of the certain pandemic that would change the way we think about cities. That would be a mistake because the next epidemic is going to be something different. There is a lot that city planning can do to make people healthier, and it’s mostly on side of immunity.
例如,在COVID-19封锁期间(至少在开放期间),城市公园是少数几个客流量激增的地方之一。城市规划的新方法应该把开放空间、分水岭、森林和公园纳入我们思考和规划城市的核心。将灰色、绿色和蓝色基础设施结合起来的更全面的规划方法有助于改善健康,更好的水管理(自然灾害后,洪水会导致许多流行病和疾病),气候适应和缓解战略从长远来看将有利于城市人口。此外,城市肌体内更大的开放空间可以帮助城市实施应急服务和疏散协议。在其他城市规划方面,城市还可以努力确保有足够的医院,具备应对疾病爆发的应急能力,此外,还有数字应对。我们可以开发应用程序,告诉你在你的社区谁生病了,人们根据整个数字基础设施做出很多决定。现代规划和土木工程产生于19世纪中期卫生设施的发展,以应对城市中疟疾和霍乱的传播。数字基础设施可能是我们这个时代的卫生设施。
谈到眼前的问题,中世纪城市是否比现代城市规划更能应对流行病。城市规划有三种方法,旨在应对流行病。第一道防线是大流行的源头。病毒几乎可以在任何地方变异和传播,但与病毒和细菌接近的环境更容易受到攻击。中世纪城市的卫生系统往往很差,下水道和水源都是开放的。这种双重安排导致饮用水供应受到细菌污染,伤寒和霍乱反复爆发。城市规划的失败常常导致黑死病等瘟疫,造成许多人死亡。第二种策略是限制病毒传播:建立防火墙和检测方法以防止病毒传播。这对我们的现代城市来说是一个挑战,因为全球货物和人员流动已经造成了流行病及其扩散的威胁。这是一个丰富的观点。我们很容易看到这些大城市和全球供应链,当然我们有一种流行病——这就是全球化的表现。但我们正在讲述一个不同的故事——一个关于非全球城市、第三大城市和城市周边地区的故事。新冠病毒-19实际上是一个城郊和城乡联系的故事,在全球地图上通常不存在的地方。这是华盛顿州的故事(新冠病毒-19首先出现在斯诺霍米什县),或者意大利的故事,它仍然大部分在郊区。其次,在中世纪,社会交往的场所较少。在大多数情况下,城市规划通常有一个核心(教堂或市场广场),城市在其周围辐射和扩展。这里是社会交往最多的地方,有时也是唯一的社交场所。因此,在大流行时期,隔离公众会更容易,因为社会接触的地方不多,而现代社会社会接触的地方数不胜数,因此很难隔离。第三个也是最后一个策略是避免传播。一旦发生严重的流行病,学校关闭、自愿甚至强制隔离将需要公众的广泛认同。然而,新闻界通常很少讨论如何帮助人们理解他们可以采取哪些措施来最好地保护自己。这对建筑和城市都有影响。在早期,在全球旅行成为一种容易的选择之前,大多数人生活在相对较小、更稳定的社区中,与那些对相同疾病有共同暴露和免疫力的人生活在一起。这使得我们必须在相对较小的地理区域内满足大多数日常需求,这也限制了我们的互动,主要是与我们有共同疾病的人。从这个意义上说,加入一个社区所带来的不仅仅是社会和经济利益;这实际上是一个生死攸关的问题,因为远离自己的病毒群旅行会使人既对他人构成威胁,又容易受到感染。
因此,大流行病的前景促使我们重新思考城市设计中一个普遍存在的分歧——一方面,那些设想全球连接的高科技大都市的人,另一方面,那些呼吁回归传统、小规模、多功能住区的人之间的分歧。我们实际上既需要高科技大都市,也需要小规模定居点。数字环境将在全球范围内连接我们,而多功能住区将为我们提供多样化的本地商品和服务,我们将在一个移动较少的未来需要。在建筑和城市设计中考虑流行病将使我们的城市更健康、更可持续。移动部件而不是身体,增加在当地社区的混合用途,并减少我们在物理环境中的接触程度——所有这些都将不仅增加我们在大流行中幸存的机会,而且还会减少我们的生态足迹。这些是相关的现象。流行病学界最大的担忧之一是,由于气候变化,传染病将会出现,因此我们越能阻止后者,我们就越能防止前者。这给马歇尔·麦克卢汉的“地球村”概念赋予了新的含义。麦克卢汉设想,电子媒体将使地球更像一个村庄,使整个星球能够像当地社区一样轻松地交流和连接。我们可能不得不以更像乡村的方式生活; we may all inhabit a digitally connected globe and, at the same time, live physically separated in our own viral communities. That prospect will surely raise objections — it goes against the expectation of freedom that has come to characterize modern life, especially in highly developed nations. Won’t a globe of physically isolated village-cities return us to a more “primitive” existence, haunted by the tribal conflicts, ethnic prejudices, and the fear of strangers? Won’t barriers to travel impose unacceptable restrictions on our ability to experience other places and understand other cultures, and won’t it constrain our ability to grow intellectually and socially beyond the bounds of our home communities? These are precisely the questions we need to raise. The deserted reality of our urban fabric today presents us with opportunities for observation. A rare insight into discerning the elemental framework of our urban infrastructure under pandemic pressures and in the vast emptiness. The larger point that the pandemics steer our focus towards is when the outbreak shall be halted and bans lifted and the world resumes as normal, there still needs to be a great degree of research and understanding into the relationship between the spread of infectious diseases and urbanization. There are two aspects that we need to focus on. One, we need to grasp where disease outbreaks occur and how they relate to the physical, spatial, economic, social and ecological changes brought on by urbanization. There is a direct relationship between contemporary urbanization and potential pandemic outbreaks. The coronavirus and its effects over our planet are streamlining our focus towards the evaluation of the present conditions of our cities and its infrastructure, raising planning and contextual inquiries, forcing us to introspect and question what we really learn from rapid urbanization and more importantly, is there a need to catalogue and curate the exploration of emerging urban landscapes?
来源:
1费舍尔托马斯:病毒式城市(www.placesjournal.org)
伊恩·克劳斯2:流行病也是一个城市规划问题(www.citylab.com)
3大流行病与城市规划(www.charlescorreafoundation.org)