[W Forum] Epidemics and Cities

Min Bo-kyung, Associate Research Fellow at the National Assembly Future Institute

We have been living in a new daily life for over a month, unlike anything we have experienced before. From daycare centers to university campuses, which should be bustling in the new semester, everything is quiet. Meeting friends for meals or going to performances is postponed indefinitely. The novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) affects not only the frontline medical staff but also small business owners worried about their livelihoods, increasing anxiety in the daily lives of citizens. The COVID-19 outbreak reported in the news is occurring mainly in cities worldwide, not just in our country. This is because infectious diseases that spread from person to person or through contaminated water or food spread very rapidly in densely populated urban areas, unlike past outbreaks in small group living settings.

Urban planning is known to have originated with the purpose of solving urban problems caused by urbanization following the Industrial Revolution, but it is interesting that infectious diseases were behind it. During the Industrial Revolution, people gathered around factories, and large factories located in the center of villages, along with poor worker housing nearby, polluted air, and rivers caused public health and hygiene problems for citizens. In response, the Public Health Act of 1848 in the UK mandated maintaining certain spatial environments for lighting and ventilation inside and outside buildings, the installation of modern water supply and sewage treatment facilities, and compulsory street cleaning, thereby defining essential elements of the urban environment and standards for urban facilities. This marked the establishment of the modern urban planning law system.

Recently, spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has been widely applied in urban policy, but as early as 1854, British physician John Snow attempted data analysis using maps. In August 1854, the most severe cholera outbreak in British history occurred in Soho, London, where over 600 people died from cholera in that area alone. At the time, people believed cholera was rampant due to London's polluted air. John Snow sought the cause of cholera by visiting houses in the Soho area where cholera occurred and marking the homes of cholera victims on a map. He discovered that deaths clustered around a water pump used by local residents. The small pieces of information marked on the map led to unexpected results, marking the emergence of infectious disease management through data analysis.

Science and technology continue to advance. Our medical technology has developed to the point where over 10,000 COVID-19 diagnostic tests can be conducted daily, and we obtain mask purchase information by checking real-time updated GIS-based mask maps. Additionally, we manage an epidemiological investigation system using big data, similar in method to what John Snow used in the 19th century but incomparable in sophistication.

However, there are aspects that cannot be overcome by technological advancement alone. Observing the current situation, we see that many people suffering from infectious diseases are generally the vulnerable in society. These include people with disabilities living in facilities no different from detention centers and urban workers in poor working environments where social distancing or daily life stoppage is difficult. While medical technology has advanced with dreams of conquering cancer and new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous vehicles promise a rosy future, we unexpectedly face a counterattack from infectious diseases, prompting us to reflect on many things.

Broad issues such as effective quarantine systems and medical systems, global cooperative vaccine development, new policy measures to overcome economic crises, and social conflict structures revealed during the spread of infectious diseases can be discussed. Among these, what we must deeply consider is how to address the structural social problem where the socially vulnerable bear much of the risk from infectious diseases. This is because the unsettling future where an unknown 'novel' virus will emerge again and the bitter future where social polarization will deepen further are overlapping and not unfamiliar.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.