Construction of a double-scale epidemic prevention system with consideration of city and community

Abstract

In the process of fighting against COVID-19, China has taken a series of measures in time, including closing down commercial and entertainment places in the city, conducting closed management of residential communities, restricting citizens’ public social gatherings, etc. During the process that these measures have successfully controlled the spread of the epidemic, new issues are also exposed in the current urban planning and construction, such as dislocation between administrative control unit and planning control unit, and the uneven distribution of urban medical facilities system, which to a large extent affect the development of urban economy and society. Therefore, under the situation that no vaccine has been developed and isolation is still needed for epidemic prevention to deal with possible repeated epidemics, it is necessary to construct an urban layout structure from the perspective of urban planning, which takes into account the needs of epidemic prevention and urban development. Specifically, the overall planning should be carried out from the two scales of city and community, so as to maintain the normal operation of urban economy, society and people’s life as much as possible on the basis of ensuring epidemic prevention. During the non-epidemic period, cities are interconnected. There is no control between the communities, and various elements interact with each other in urban space. At this time, the city can be understood as a multi system interactive “network”. After the outbreak of the epidemic, if we can only control the communities where the epidemic has occurred, it can not only effectively limit the spread of the virus, but also protect the basic living needs of citizens through the improvement of community supporting facilities. At the same time, it can also minimize the impact of space control on the city. In this way, the network characteristics of the whole city can be preserved. We can embed isolated and managed communities into the urban system through important systems and corridors, forming a “network” + “beaded” pattern. In this urban pattern, the double-scale epidemic prevention system needs to improve the ability of different urban systems to resist the impact of epidemic situation at the overall level of the city, and provide basic guarantee for the prevention and control management of communities. According to the characteristics of COVID-19, the transportation system, medical system, garbage and sewage treatment system should be adjusted, so as to realize the isolation, effective supply and timely treatment of personnel, materials and wastes. On this basis, community, as the basic unit of urban administration, is also the focal place for the outbreak, transmission and prevention and control of the epidemic. Different from the open management in the daily period, closed management must be carried out in the communities where infected persons or close contacts are found. This requires the community to be equipped with basic medical service facilities and emergency sites, and focus on the implementation of inspection and control of personnel and materials in and out, and centralized disinfection of waste. The double-scale epidemic prevention system proposed in this paper is not only a means to deal with the new epidemic situation, but also an effective way to face the unknown virus in the future. Among the two epidemic prevention levels of city and community, the city level mainly plays the role of framework support, which is an important support for the organic combination of urban systematic epidemic prevention control and community self-organization epidemic prevention management. As the core management and control unit, the community needs to have perfect social service facilities, and connect with the basic administrative unit of the city, so as to realize the organic combination and effective connection of epidemic prevention and control and daily management.