Urban planners seeking to return to old normal: Study

WATERLOO: A recent study by the University of Waterloo suggested that planners of downtowns in mid-sized areas are more interested in returning urban spaces to the way things were before the pandemic. The study named ‘Planning for Post-Pandemic Downtowns of Mid-size Urban Areas’ was published recently in the journal ‘Planning Practice and Research’.

Urban planners were asked to identify the attributes that contributed to the success of downtowns prior to the pandemic along with the attributes that would facilitate their post-pandemic recovery. The study found some urban scholars predicting that recovery will lead to new normal, meanwhile maximum urban planners focused on restoring the old normal.

The study, according to Pierre Filion, an Emeritus Professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Planning, demonstrated how, despite calls for greater creativity and innovation, there has been no variation in what planners considered as more crucial to downtowns before and after the epidemic.

Even with significant focus being paid to the impact of the pandemic on the greatest metropolitan areas, the findings suggested that the ideal regenerated downtowns will exhibit many of the same functions in a distinctive physical environment. According to Filion, the analysis suggests that there would be no significant changes in the core shapes and functions of post-pandemic downtowns compared to pre-pandemic downtowns in the early twenty-first century. Governments were also highlighted as a barrier to the successful rehabilitation of mid-sized downtowns in the study.