When in 2009 Jacob Ross Boswell, in his article "Dystopic Verdure" in MONU #11 on "Clean Urbanism", introduced the topic of diseases, such as malaria, cholera, tuberculosis, yellow fever, and typhus etc, and how they had impacted urban landscapes and the shape of cities in the past, we were very intrigued and considered dedicating an entire issue on this topic. Particularly fascinating were his elaborations on how, by the second half of the 19th Century, urban designers and landscape architects such as Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, and a host of other architects, planners, and landscape architects collaborated with medical colleagues like Chicago's John Rauch in reshaping American cities: broadening streets and boulevards to allow for more sanitary air flow, moving pestilential cemeteries and dumps to the fringes of the city, carving out, reclaiming, or simply seizing land for America's first great urban parks, such as New York's Central Park. However, in the end we abandoned the idea to create an entire MONU issue on the relation between diseases and cities, since it seemed to us as something that belonged to the past only.
However, since the recent outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic with which the entire world struggles currently, there does not seem to be a theme that is more present than discussing the consequences of diseases - and in particular infectious and contagious diseases - for cities. Thus, we deem it necessary, important, and urgently relevant to initiate a reflection on "Pandemic Urbanism". In that way we wish to connect to - and continue - discussions that have started already, in which some predict, or hope that covid-19, the coronavirus disease, re-shapes and transforms cities. The urbanist Joel Kotkin, seems to forecast the end of the era of the megacity, arguing that 'germy' cities such as New York will lose their appeal. On the other hand Richard Florida, one of the contributors to our current MONU issue #32 on "Affordable Urbanism", appears to question this, pointing out that the flue pandemic of 1918-19 did not interrupt the growth of cities such as Chicago. Although terrible outbreaks of the plague and cholera barely delayed the growth of cities such as London or Paris in the past, these diseases evidently influenced those cities in various ways.
