Post Covid Cities

 For almost a year Covid 19 has become the lead topic of every conversation and has permanently changed life as we know it in many aspects. The biggest changes to the world have been the social aspect with people being limited or restricted to seeing their families and having to social distance to prevent it's spread. As well as this it has changed the economy and has caused mass unemployment and a great deal of redundancies. For some life may never return to normal due to the social skills they lost by being by themselves for so long, which has ultimately changed their character and lifestyle for good.

A whopping 86% of people had to work from home due to the pandemic, which is a 36% rise from that of 2012, when analysing this in terms of the Architecture and Design profession it could change the way we view our homes forever. When working through my first projects, I made it very clear that my designs needed a work space or office without a second thought, when looking back on this I believe it was a  conscious decision to accommodate for those who have to work from home due to the ever growing numbers of people working from home during lockdowns and onwards from them. From the 19th century due to the outbreaks of cholera, new sewage works were implemented across the UK thereby improving resistance to the disease and progressing as a population. One can only hope that the same result occurs in the post-covid era. However, when analysing life it has its positives with many appreciating friends and families company a lot more, plus due to the lack of travel and factory work the environmental effects we create have lessened ever so slightly. Nonetheless it is clear that many have struggled with the social aspects of life following the first lockdown as well as the economy struggling with many small businesses losing work completely and having to shut down causing mass redundancies. This is even shown by the large companies with M&S reporting their first ever annual loss after 4 years of trading, showing there was a dent created in our economy.

Although there is no argument against there being some positives, the negatives are there as a lesson for the future, in many of our lives this is the first large-scale pandemic we have all faced with as many as 3.9 billion people being in some sort of lockdown in April 2020. It is clear that changes can be made to our designs of cities and rural areas as a whole to lessen the effects of a contagious disease to buffer its spread and effects, however it is not necessary to change everything in the way we live our lives. It is important that we look to the future positively much more than we dwell on the past, and hope for a happier future.

Design and Ethnicity

Growing up as a white male in modern times I would consider myself very lucky, especially when reading up on this subject within Architecture, which severely opened my eyes to issues within the profession and other professions as well. It is important that we look back and learn from the past and excel forwards in the future creating equal opportunities for every human being within our profession of Architecture as well as a global society in general. The challenges I have faced and will face are incomparable to that of minority groups in modern day, but especially those who lived 60 years ago. In 1955 Rosa Parks was jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a white male, which makes you recoil hearing that this happened not too long ago. The UK as a whole in 2014 showed that 87.2% were White British of the 64.6 million living here, which is an astounding statistic.

Within Architecture the statistics of ethnicity in Architecture was even more surprising to me having no prior knowledge of the subject, with 93.6% of Architects being White with only 0.9% being black and less than 3% for for Asian, mixed race or other backgrounds. 9% of BAME responses say they strongly agree that they have been victims of racism in the work place with a further 15% agreeing as well. Improvements are looking to be made within the profession such as with the statement from the BIID stating they want BAME designers to flourish and enjoy successful careers without discrimination like everyone should be able to experience. 

The groups within Architecture and design looking to change the workplace for the better are young groups which shines a small light on the future that things will improve in the future. Based off of this I not only hope, but believe we will eventually achieve equality within the profession as well as society, where a designers creativity and work ethic is judged, not their beliefs or ethnicity.