Abstract
The 2020 collapse of the global economy due to the Covid-19 pandemic has enabled us to think about long term trends and what the future could hold for our cities and regions, especially due to the climate agenda. The paper sets out the historical precedents for economic transitions after collapses that unleash new technologically based innovation waves. These are shown to be associated with different energy and infrastructure priorities and their transport and resulting urban forms. The new technologies in the past were emerging but mainstreamed as the new economy was built on new investments. The paper suggests that the new economy, for the next 30 years, is likely to be driven by the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agendas (summarised as zero carbon–zero poverty) and will have a strong base in a cluster of innovative technologies: renewable energy, electromobility, smart cities, hydrogen-based industry, circular economy technologies, and biophilic urbanism. The first three are well underway, and the other three will need interventions if not cultural changes and may miss being mainstreamed in this recovery but could still play a minor role in the new economy. The resulting urban transformations are likely to build on Covid-19 through “global localism” and could lead to five new features: (1) relocalised centres with distributed infrastructure, (2) tailored innovations in each urban fabric, (3) less car dependence, (4) symbiotic partnerships for funding, and (5) rewritten manuals for urban professionals. This period needs human creativity to play a role in revitalising the human dimension of cities. The next wave following this may be more about regenerative development.
Highlights
What Covid Has Done to CitiesThe 2020s began with apocalyptic bushfires across Australia that were unprecedented and harboured the sense that the future had arrived in terms of climate change [2]
There are many cities that are already leading in adopting the climate change agenda, with clusters of cities generating global cooperation (100 Res Cities, C40, ICLEI); many will set their recovery agendas to achieve new goals and outcomes in zero carbon and zero poverty that will establish them as leaders [24,25,144]
New context- and outcome-specific zero carbon–zero poverty manuals are needed for planning, transport, energy, water, waste, every area of the economy developed since the 1940s, with a focus on how these resources can be regulated and prioritised in their infrastructure, density and functions in a far more nuanced way to deliver the cluster of innovations necessary for the new economy [81]
Summary
The 2020s began with apocalyptic bushfires across Australia that were unprecedented and harboured the sense that the future had arrived in terms of climate change [2]. The innovations that appear to be emerging from the ashes of the economy laid waste by the Covid pandemic will be outlined some of which may not mainstream as well as how the cluster of innovations are likely to transform our cities of the 21st century through a business model that has been called. The innovations for this agenda are able to attract the cultural and political momentum of something much wanted and needed but not possible until now [24,25] This agenda has been the subject for much urban transformation literature, stressing the need for new integrated solutions that address the nexus between changes in energy, transport, water, waste and biodiversity and how they shape our cities [26,27]. The paper will examine the likely innovations that will lead in this post-Covid new economy, and it will assess their deliverability as well as their implications for cities
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