Learning from COVID-19 and planning post-pandemic cities to reduce pathogen transmission pathways

Enhance urban resilience and preparedness for future crisis rests upon planning being understood as a set of complex interrelationships between buildings, streetscapes, human health, and multiple agents of disease. Lessons need to be learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic. Planning, along with other built environment disciplines, need to identify inclusive healthy urbanisms approaches for reducing pathogen transmission pathways while also enhancing mental and physical wellbeing and the overall quality of urban life. This needs to come along with the development of national standards that would place health at the centre of all planning and building decisions.