COVID-19 Shows Us the Need …
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The second reason is the global interconnectivity. Ever since the old Silk Roads
emerged beginning in the first century BC when Chinese luxury products started
to appear in Rome, economic activities have begun to become global. Past industrial revolutions continued to interconnect raw materials, talents, services from all
around the world. With the complex, hyperconnected globalized economic system
today, one can hardly survive on local produce. The free-market economic system,
based on which much of the urban areas have thrived, have used the convenience of
globalized technology, international financial institutions and regional trade agreements to take advantage of abundant, cheap labour in the developing countries. The
results have degraded the environmental quality in many emerging urban areas and
offered pittances of economic benefits to labourers who are often referred to as urban
migrants.
On the one hand, the high dependency of global interconnectivity for daily life in
the urban era has drastically accelerated the spread of diseases such as COVID-19,
compared to the pandemic of flu a century ago. On the other hand, increased air
pollution, global climate change and the accompanying extreme weather events have
increased the challenge of maintaining healthy lifestyles in dense and highly interconnected urban communities worldwide, weakening their ability to cope with epidemic
diseases.
3 Insights and Findings
In addition to the necessity and urgency for bottom-up climate actions at the city
level, the significance of urban green space resources has been further highlighted
by the complex socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on a global scale. As space
in cities is increasingly claimed, marked, planned, and priced meticulously, public
open spaces, such as parks, green corridors, lawns, are particularly invaluable spaces
for the urban population, particularly for those who cannot afford a spacious living
environment, such as migrant workers and other vulnerable groups. Open, walking
spaces can contribute to enlarge distances between pedestrians, reducing the risk
of transmission due to the dependency on public transportation, and furthermore,
encourages walking and biking, which helps to maintain health. Google’s global
COVID-19 community mobility data shows that global mobility trends for park
spaces during the quarantine period (mid-February–mid-May) decreased about 4.5%
compared to pre-corona baseline; while mobility trends for retail and recreation
spaces decreased around 22% and for workplaces decreased around 24% compared to
baseline. These numbers highlighted the importance of urban green spaces. Sightings
of nature during COVID-19 have seemed to help many people gain an alternative
perspective to the one that had long been human-centric.
Urban green spaces in cities should be treated as an invaluable common-pool
resource for our common health and wellbeing for two main reasons (Ostrom 2009).
First, no one should be excluded from using urban green spaces for health and
wellbeing purposes; technically speaking, it is also impossible to exclude any urban
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The second reason is the global interconnectivity. Ever since the old Silk Roads
emerged beginning in the first century BC when Chinese luxury products started
to appear in Rome, economic activities have begun to become global. Past industrial revolutions continued to interconnect raw materials, talents, services from all
around the world. With the complex, hyperconnected globalized economic system
today, one can hardly survive on local produce. The free-market economic system,
based on which much of the urban areas have thrived, have used the convenience of
globalized technology, international financial institutions and regional trade agreements to take advantage of abundant, cheap labour in the developing countries. The
results have degraded the environmental quality in many emerging urban areas and
offered pittances of economic benefits to labourers who are often referred to as urban
migrants.
On the one hand, the high dependency of global interconnectivity for daily life in
the urban era has drastically accelerated the spread of diseases such as COVID-19,
compared to the pandemic of flu a century ago. On the other hand, increased air
pollution, global climate change and the accompanying extreme weather events have
increased the challenge of maintaining healthy lifestyles in dense and highly interconnected urban communities worldwide, weakening their ability to cope with epidemic
diseases.
3 Insights and Findings
In addition to the necessity and urgency for bottom-up climate actions at the city
level, the significance of urban green space resources has been further highlighted
by the complex socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 on a global scale. As space
in cities is increasingly claimed, marked, planned, and priced meticulously, public
open spaces, such as parks, green corridors, lawns, are particularly invaluable spaces
for the urban population, particularly for those who cannot afford a spacious living
environment, such as migrant workers and other vulnerable groups. Open, walking
spaces can contribute to enlarge distances between pedestrians, reducing the risk
of transmission due to the dependency on public transportation, and furthermore,
encourages walking and biking, which helps to maintain health. Google’s global
COVID-19 community mobility data shows that global mobility trends for park
spaces during the quarantine period (mid-February–mid-May) decreased about 4.5%
compared to pre-corona baseline; while mobility trends for retail and recreation
spaces decreased around 22% and for workplaces decreased around 24% compared to
baseline. These numbers highlighted the importance of urban green spaces. Sightings
of nature during COVID-19 have seemed to help many people gain an alternative
perspective to the one that had long been human-centric.
Urban green spaces in cities should be treated as an invaluable common-pool
resource for our common health and wellbeing for two main reasons (Ostrom 2009).
First, no one should be excluded from using urban green spaces for health and
wellbeing purposes; technically speaking, it is also impossible to exclude any urban