Weekdays / Weekends — Will It Matter ?
By: Three Dots In A Row
Tags: Urban, Pandemic, Urban Planning, WFH

Some thoughts on how vicissitudes of daily life could change for the urban society post the COVID-19 pandemic…

Before we all took to ‘“meeting the world” from home there were days where we usually did work activities during the weekdays and leave leisure pursuits for the weekends.

We can broadly categorize our outdoor journey into one of these following categories —

Work

Pick-up/drop-off others

Shopping (buying groceries or other goods, and all visits to shops )

Personal business (visits to services not limited to banks, libraries, religious visits, medical visits, restaurant,hair dressers, laundry and dry cleaning services)

Social-recreation (visit friends, sports, social activities, volunteer work, public events, entertainment )

This undeclared difference in activity-travel patterns between different days of the week (especially weekdays and weekend days) manifested itself in network traffic congestion patterns and high demand for certain services on specific days of the week. Thus there was a clear distinction between what we counted as a weekday and weekend and influenced travel options, modal accessibility, and constraints.

As 2020 progressed, for those who are saving the world by staying home — our distinctions between work, leisure, home, and travel began blurring.

As a not so avid supporter of predictions, I’ve listed down some envisioned shifts in the way we work and the look of the urban community.

Travel & Shopping

Population that “works from home” — All the jobs related to information technology to some extent could be performed via a laptop. Many companies have started giving their employees the option to be remote forever or take a flexible approach.

— All the jobs related to information technology to some extent could be performed via a laptop. Many companies have started giving their employees the option to be remote forever or take a flexible approach. Need not fight with the online ticket booking system for a trip to home or ‘getaway’ — As more and more people choose to work remote or be flexible, traveling/moving population may become distributed and choose to travel not only on weekends, as a result we may face lesser competition while trying to login into the online ticketing system and book a weekend train or air ticket to their families or a holiday. If your the unofficial booking agent for your friends and family let me know how things have changed for you and how you think it might in the future.

Earlier we would expect non-work trips to be lesser on working days and significantly increase on non-working days because of work-related constraints contributing to difficulty in allocating time for non-work trips.

But if our “work schedule” strictly isn’t a schedule anymore and as I mentioned the already blurring borders might shuffle our non-work trips.

Healthcare — Making it go virtual

Welcoming telemedicine for preliminary or even full diagnosis …

The COVID-19 pandemic has directly accelerated the speed of digitalization of business (e-commerce, social media, search engine optimization,logistics, application services, budgeting) in all countries.

As people have become hesitant to step out, even for medical needs teleconsultation has appeared as a possible alternative. It intends to use technological means to mitigate resource constraints associated with an in-person physician consultation and use remote monitoring tools to help manage chronic illnesses. Patients can be in their home, or in any other setting, to receive a consultation if they have the prerequisites like decent video calling facility for videoconferencing. But getting people to use new virtual health tools has been a challenge for the telehealth industry. The person who is providing the care must have same level of expertise and exercise the same caution if not more than what they do in a physical consultation.

These are just speculations of an online persona blogging for fun, the actual implications and initial barriers of implementing telemedicine as a solution are not discussed here.

Governments Across the World — Urban Development Goals Modified

While income and socioeconomic variables determine how people relocate and refashion their surroundings, authorities all over formulated the urban development goals to take into consideration the areas that might face difficulties in the face of uncertain disruptions to normal life.

Nearly 90% of all cases and epicentres of the pandemic across countries are in cities. But population density does not necessarily correlate with high incidence of the pandemic, but poverty and deprivation, poor planning, inadequate infrastructure and weak governance structures do. Source — UNDP

Another example: Aatmanirbhar Bharat

India as a country has learnt a lot from this pandemic. As the situation continues to train us to lead our lives within four walls, the government too is modifying its initiatives preparing for the impact of a pandemic in the future.

Walkable city

Brief trips involving travel by bicycle or walking have been defined as proximity trips. Avoiding the concept of dividing a town into discrete zones for living, working, and entertainment and minimizing long distance travel for basic necessities is the new goal for urban city thinkers (Read “15 minute cities”) . Anybody living in the environment friendly, decentralized community is surrounded by things they need regular access to (shops, schools, health care, employment etc.) i.e. within walking or cycling distance.

Mandatory medical support, 24×7 pharmacy, ATM facility, in-house convenient stores are some facilities that property builders include as a primer while selling “gated communities” to its residents.

What do you think is next?

Slowly people are back on their foot, stepping out when necessary while being cautious of the spread. Schools and colleges have reopened their large buildings to students and glimpses of life before the pandemic can be seen. While we all silently agree that things are not going to be the same anymore, what do you think (personally) should the furbished business include for the urban community?

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