Need for Safe Cities in the ‘New Normal’
The COVID-19 crisis has pushed all of the world’s major cities to the frontline of devising new ways and means of dealing with it. Cities are under unprecedented strain, from stressed-out economies to overburdened healthcare systems. As nations continue to fight the pandemic, confining people to their homes and changing the way the world moves, works, and thinks, one question lingers in everyone’s minds: What will life be like in the ‘New Normal,’ post-pandemic?
The COVID-19 is already posing one of the biggest challenges of all time, while the cities are struggling to provide even basic amenities like access to water and clean sewerage. Other issues being daily wagers suffering from lost income and scarcity of social safety, required most at times like these.
After the pandemic ends and the’ new normal’ begin, citizens will now look for safe cities that: Enable infrastructure protection, Top-notch city surveillance. Excellent transport security management, Emergency centres, High-tech transportation and road information systems, Automatic vehicle locating system
The current health crisis has taught us that we must strengthen our cities’ digital infrastructure. Some cities have successfully slowed the spread of the disease by simply tracking the movements of infected people. They have been predicting where transmission clusters will emerge next using “big data” analysis. From a public health standpoint, these are much safer cities, and we can also leverage the power of such health surveillance in the new normal.
The future safe and smart city must include infrastructure and housing planning for the well-being and resilience of the poor living in urban areas, developing and improving infrastructure across the developing world to bridge the urban services divide, and, finally, planning infrastructure geared toward a sustainable future.
