What impact will the pandemic have on the future of our cities? Only the history books will be able to say for sure.
However, our job as citymakers is to ensure that cities are fit for the many different futures that they might meet. The impact of the pandemic has created an opportunity to study how people’s lives are impacted when they are forced to rely on their immediate community for many of their day-to-day needs, from entertainment to access to green space. We wanted to investigate how lockdowns and the pandemic, restricting people’s movements to their neighbourhoods, highlighted the benefits and shortcomings of those neighbourhoods and the possible consequences for future design.
That’s why we’ve commissioned Arup’s City Living Barometer – a survey of 5,000 residents across five major European cities: London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin and Milan. The survey used the 15-minute city concept – which argues that people enjoy a better quality of life when amenities are within 15 minutes walking or cycling distance from their home – to roughly assess the liveability of each city. The idea was originally developed by Professor Carlos Moreno at the Sorbonne and espouses a new approach to urban design.
Read the full insight on the Arup website