The world after Covid-19: Recovery or reinvention?

Our recent Covid-19 webinar series highlighted multiple impacts of the latest pandemic. What began as a public health emergency has transformed into an economic crisis with profound implications that outlive the pandemic itself.

Covid-19 has highlighted interdependencies that were invisible to many. It has laid bare concealed vulnerabilities. This should not be news; any crisis, whether a financial crash or natural disaster, has wide-ranging implications.

While we have no choice to but to respond to emergencies in the best way we can, we do have a choice about the path to recovery: Do we choose to return to the status quo ante? Or do we see the global economic pause as the moment to plan a new pathway to the future we want?

To take a simple analogy, if your house is flooded, it makes little sense to restore the fixtures and fittings to their prior state without additional safeguards to prevent future flooding. If the flood risk remains, the sensible course is to replace carpets with tiles, to raise electrical sockets, and so on.

To many in the West, largely untouched by similar pandemics, Covid-19 feels like a one-in-a-hundred year event: something we just have to get through before returning to life as before. It’s a comforting idea. But it may prove to be wishful thinking. Nonetheless, pressure will grow for more robust measures to ensure we are resilient to future pandemics.

A necessary – but unimaginative – step would be to replenish stores of medical equipment and to improve protocols. A much more responsible approach would be to look at the interconnections between all aspects of human activity and to build in resilience at every point. Some will say this is too difficult and naïve at a time when businesses are fighting merely to survive. The loudest voices in this camp will be those whose business models were already being overtaken.

Perhaps we need to re-assess what we mean by national wealth? This is a debate that has been going on since before many of us were born. In 1968, Robert F Kennedy said: “Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them…and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children….Yet (it) does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play….or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials”.

Kennedy concluded that GNP measured everything “except that which makes life worthwhile."* 

So what about the built environment? Have we done enough to understand the social impact of our buildings and places? Some aspects of this have become apparent during the lockdowns in many countries. We have seen benefits such as cleaner air, and fewer deaths and hospital admissions due to pollution. We have also seen unwanted consequences such as mental illness and domestic violence exacerbated by isolation.

Perhaps our hospitals could have coped better if they didn’t have to deal with the regular inflow of victims of avoidable accidents. The US National Council on Aging estimates that accidental falls amongst seniors (incidentally those most vulnerable if they contract Covid-19 in hospital) annually account for 2.8 million emergency visits, 800,000 hospitalisations and a total cost of $50 billion (2015).**

Perhaps with homes that were better adapted to their needs, these seniors need never have accessed emergency services. A modest investment in safe buildings would repay itself in improvements to quality of life and the freeing up of medical care for other needs. But this investment is usually seen as a cost, and the financial returns do not accrue to the developer, landlord or homeowner.    

The same goes for energy retrofits. The costs of improving poor quality homes through insulation, and smart and efficient ventilation, heating and lighting are significant. On paper, returns can be expected in the form of reduced energy bills. Furthermore, there are examples of retrofit programmes that not only save energy, but improve quality of life and well-being, and reduce social problems. While these benefits are tangible, they are uncosted – so why bother? So goes the prevailing logic.

Some argue that we can transpose lessons from the pandemic to other global challenges: Covid-19 has shown that our supply chains are over-extended, reaffirmed the value of international co-operation, and reminded us that, in times of crisis, markets need strong and timely government intervention.

But beware false comparisons. Other crises that threaten the sustainability of human life – a biodiversity collapse, a burgeoning and ageing population, water/resource scarcity and climate change – are of a different nature: a vaccine will not cool our atmosphere and lock-downs won’t preserve biodiversity.

The professions of the built and natural environment can lead the way towards a post-pandemic recovery that does not simply return us to previous norms. We have an opportunity to press the case for transition to sustainable and resilient economic and social systems, and to showcase how this might be achieved.

Our webinar panellists saw this as the moment for our professions to step up. If we do, we will be better prepared for the next crisis. We may even avert it altogether.

* https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/remarks-at-the-university-of-kansas-march-18-1968

** https://www.ncoa.org/news/resources-for-reporters/get-the-facts/falls-prevention-facts/