Abstract
The built environment closely relates to the development of COVID-19 and post-disaster recovery. Nevertheless, few studies examine its impacts on the recovery stage and corresponding urban development strategies. This study examines the built environment’s role in Wuhan’s recovery at the city block level through a natural experiment. We first aggregated eight built environmental characteristics (BECs) of 192 city blocks from the perspectives of density, infrastructure supply, and socioeconomic environment; then, the BECs were associated with the recovery rates at the same city blocks, based on the public “COVID-19-free” reports of about 7,100 communities over the recovery stages. The results showed that three BECs, i.e., “number of nearby designated hospitals,” “green ratio,” and “housing price” had significant associations with Wuhan’s recovery when the strict control measures were implemented. At the first time of reporting, more significant associations were also found with “average building age,” “neighborhood facility development level,” and “facility management level.” In contrast, no associations were found for “controlled residential land-use intensity” and “plot ratio” throughout the stages. The findings from Wuhan’s recovery pinpointing evidence with implications in future smart and resilient urban development are as follows: the accessibility of hospitals should be comprehensive in general; and the average housing price of a city block can reflect its post-disaster recoverability compared to that of the other blocks.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of the deadliest pandemics in human history (Sohrabi et al, 2020)
The results showed that three built environmental characteristics (BECs), i.e., “number of nearby designated hospitals,” “green ratio,” and “housing price” had significant associations with Wuhan’s recovery when the strict control measures were implemented
As shown in the red rectangle #1 in Figure 6, CFRP1 was significantly associated with all six BECs from the infrastructure supply and socioeconomic environment, i.e., nearby designated hospitals (3 km), neighborhood facility development level, green ratio, housing price, building age, and facility management
Summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of the deadliest pandemics in human history (Sohrabi et al, 2020). Its direct physical settings and indirect human behavior intervention have led to its significant influence on infectious disease dynamics, especially in certain infections transmitted by contact, aerosols, or droplets (Pinter-Wollman et al, 2018). Typical built environmental characteristics (BECs) include population and land-use density (Yu and Wen 2016; Ahmadian et al, 2019), infrastructure supply (Loo and Lam 2012; Chen et al, 2019), and social-economic environment (Aldrich 2012; Qu et al, 2018), the role of which has been proved critical for the known infectious diseases such as cholera (Pinter-Wollman et al, 2018), H1N1 (Lowcock et al, 2012; Ponnambalam et al, 2012), and SARS (Fang et al, 2009). The relationship between these BECs and the COVID19 pandemic needs to be re-identified to inspire urban recovery and future resilient urban development
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