By Sadiq Abubakar Gulma
Our cities and communities are currently put through their paces in ensuring public safety via the planning of essential trips outside the home. Balancing the link between urban planning and public health has never been more crucial. The promotion of the crucial weapon we use to shield ourselves against COVID-19 is shifting from washing hands to a spatial dimension one. The need to be 1.5m apart from each other. For the most conscious of us who decide to go for an essential trip outside the house, especially to a public place like the open-air market or a bank, a fear of strangers creeps in and the question of “if people will adhere to the 1.5m protocol or not” makes you anxious.
On all food shopping days vis-a-vis relaxed days to come out of the house for restocking, unbelievable images stir up the internet. They not only stir hysteria amongst the most careful of us but throws many questions out there.
When I spoke to my 67-year-old aunt living in the ancient city of Zaria, she described the sights of markets akin to that of the ritual stoning of the devil during hajj in Saudi Arabia. Anyone who has seen the images of pilgrims pelting the pillars would recall the body contact of the thousands of people who are there. This is despite the planning put in place- countries are given time slots and they, in turn, allocate smaller slots to their different states. When I visited 2 years ago, it was like a body-rubbing contest.
Different state governments are instituting different movement plans as they deem fit. But what is the right thing to do? What should guide these movements? The successful planning of the movement of people, goods, and services is essentially an urban planning one (and not just a public health own) that needs to be spearheaded by professional urban planners, or at least largely consulted.
The American Public Health Association, formed in 1872 and among the pioneer public health associations globally have two of its seven founding members to be urban designers; an architect and a housing expert. This was possible due to the close-knit relationship and roles the experts have in ensuring public safety through master plans of cities for comprehensive planning of houses, neighbourhoods, roads, delivery of social services like water and sewage, disaster preparedness, and economic developments.
When the physician John Snow made his famous discovery of contaminated water sources in the UK in the 19th century as the source of cholera, it was not due to laboratory tests. Snow conducted geographical analysis on the city maps to pinpoint locations of infected people. The resulting maps led to the zoning, delineation, and identification of the tap as the most possible causality of the disease.
As I tried to find out the composition of COVID-19 task force teams across the different states, I found the Federal Government Task-force website that only mentioned functional areas of the team. Urban Planning is of course missing from the list. It is rather pertinent that governments should reconsider the composition of COVID-19 task force teams to include professional urban planners.
Simply because the government says we should come out and conduct business does not make us immune to the virus. Much of the most affected part of the country, northern Nigeria, has high density cities built without a proper urban plan. We need to start enforcing and assuring people of effective movement strategies.
One way we could start playing safe is to reconsider the number of food shopping days allowed by the government. Amid the stay-at-home protocol, many states are only allowing food shopping for two days. And this maybe why we will bend the curve later than earlier if we had allowed more shopping days or rather time, in a week. The challenge is a planning one. The 2 shopping days allowed, and spread far apart, creates a frenzy. Undoubtedly.
COVID-19 requires social distancing of 1.5m in crowded places. Our open-air markets or rather fellow citizens, unfortunately, cannot largely ensure this. An urban research firm in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Shift Architecture Urbanism proposed a new 16-square grid outlined on floors of markets with either tapes or paint. This design is being adopted by many markets in Rotterdam but faces the challenge of movement laws instituted by the government. To ensure this, new social distancing protocols need to be enforced. It is the most effective preventive measure put in place by countries that are re-opening their cities.
Banks and similar organizations with branches all over the country need to open en masse and with more operation time, and not the other way around.
With more operation days and times though, say 5 days in a week, you have more options for shopping and conducting business for people to choose from. This automatically makes them more careful to plan their shopping than forced to choose one or two days a week.
This challenge requires urban planning principles to get right. In as much as it will result in more people on the street continuously, it also means that at the instance of coming close to each other, you end up with fewer people at open-air markets and shopping malls. It is not about balancing health and economy.
In Sweden (who by the way didn’t lockdown totally) and countries planning to open up for business after a few months, there are evident preparations taking place. Restaurants are clearly marking non-sitting areas in the restaurant, reducing the number of people by almost 50%. For instance, a table of 4 people will allow only 1 or 2 people maximum to sit diagonally opposite to each other. And the seats are clearly marked where it is not available to sit. So the choice is not voluntarily made but clearly marked and communicated by the place owners.
Libraries, public places, and anywhere where people sit and queue are clearly marked with standing and sitting areas. For example, banks and businesses that expect people to queue up have marks drawn on the floor to show where you need to stand at any point in time during the queue. And this must be enforced by the government for businesses to adhere to. Businesses should constitute COVID-19 adherence teams in their places of businesses, in addition to temperature checks at building entrances.
Nigeria is fragile and all needs to be ensured to keep the country up as we hope for a vaccine. Over 7,500 research papers have been published since the outbreak of the disease. Scientists and governments are both learning by the day and changing protocols to reflect the most agreed solutions amongst the scientific community.
We need to start planning for the present and foreseeable future with the existence of COVID-19 and without a vaccine. That is if we are being rationally optimistic. While the government treads on eggshells to balance our collective survival with the Nigerian economy, it must as well ensure social distancing protocol are adhered to by all businesses.
Sadiq Abubakar Gulma tweets is an urban development professional in Abuja and tweets @sadiqgulma (all illustrations by Fatima Umar).
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sky Daily
