Pandemic Urbanism: Infectious Diseases on a Planet of Cities

by S. Harris Ali, Creighton Connolly, Roger Keil

Emerging infectious disease outbreaks have transformed the very nature of urban life worldwide, even as the extent and experience of pandemics are shaped by the planetary urban condition. Pandemic Urbanism critically investigates these relationships in a world faced with its first pandemic on a majority urban planet.

The authors reveal the social and historical context of recent infectious disease events and how they have variously transformed the urban fabric. They highlight the important role played by socio-ecological processes associated with the global urban periphery - suburban or post-suburban zones and hinterland areas of "extended" urbanization - changing mobility patterns, and new forms of urban governance and pandemic response. The book develops novel insights for post-pandemic urban governance and planning grounded in the quest for social and spatial justice. In doing so, it reveals a paradox at the heart of pandemic urban life enables contagion to spread easily, yet at the same time offers unique possibilities to contain and respond to disease outbreaks.

Multidisciplinary in approach and written by experts in the field, this book is an invaluable primer on the origins, pathways, and management of infectious disease.

Genres: Nonfiction

268 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 1, 2022

Reviews

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The term 'pandemic urbanism' refers to how pandemics affect and reshape cities and urban areas. It explores the social, economic, and spatial consequences of pandemics on urban environments.

In the book Pandemic Urbanism by S. Harris Ali, Creighton Connolly, and Roger Keil, the authors navigate readers through the intricate relationship between urban development and public health. They emphasize the vulnerability of urban areas to infectious diseases, backed by case studies and empirical evidence from diverse global contexts. This book effectively illustrates how the pandemic has exacerbated existing urban inequalities and revealed underlying structural weaknesses in our cities.

I received a copy from my son, who is a co-author. Quickly, I found myself engrossed in the timely and comprehensive writing that explores the origins, transmission routes, and management of infectious diseases from a multifaceted perspective. Ending on a note of optimism, Pandemic Urbanism offers an innovative framework for post-pandemic governance, inspiring new ideas to reshape urban environments in a more environmentally sustainable, socially just, and democratically open manner.

I learned a great deal from this engaging and thought-provoking book and highly recommend it to all interested in this subject matter. You can find it in paperback and Kindle formats through the following links: Amazon and John Wiley (UK)

[Sodeh Abadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

read this as a service designer looking for systemic insight into how cities -and the services and infrastructures we design- fail or adapt under pandemic conditions. The book delivers a genuinely useful framework: it argues that "extended urbanization" (sprawling, networked, often informal growth) reshapes how disease emerges and spreads, analyzed through three lenses, demographics, infrastructure, and governance. That triad maps almost perfectly onto service ecosystems: who the users are, what the flows and touchpoints are, and who owns the decisions. The case studies are the strongest part. SARS shows how building systems and global city networks became transmission vectors; Ebola reveals how community-based responses can outperform top-down institutions when formal systems collapse; COVID-19 exposes how "essential workers" in warehouses and crowded housing became hotspots, not because of density, but because of structural inequality and the inability to self-isolate. The authors' "dialectic of infection", we get exposed because we are too connected, then get sick because we are not connected enough, is a powerful reframe for any designer building platforms or supply chains.
It diagnoses the system brilliantly but prescribes less than I hoped. Still, if you are a systems-minded designer interested in resilience and hidden infrastructures, the case studies alone are worth the read. Skim the theory, dwell on the cases, and extract the systems lessons. It is not a design manual, it is a mirror. 3/5.

[Mariam]

pretty good discussion of the SARS spread vs Covid.