A Journal in a Plague Year

Cities are currently under enormous pressures from COVID-19. Students and friends ask has the world ever seen anything like this? It seems unique, yet I thought about Black Death (1347–1351) and the Great Plague (1665–1666), which inspired me to re-read Daniel Defoe A Journal of the Plague Year [1]. I was struck more by similarities than differences. Defoe starts his narrative “September, 1664: the plague was returned again in Holland; …some said from Italy, others from the Levant…; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it came…”. Then as now rumours of its origin were common, so we read suggestions that the coronavirus was created by the Chinese or Americans as a biological weapon, US industry to increase vaccine sales, Israel to profit from insider trading, the UK to promote population control or as a strange Italian pneumonia. The number of plague deaths in London were printed in the weekly Bills of Mortality, as effective, yet as error prone as the internet: Bill 23–30 May 1665 tells “…burials in St Giles's were fifty-three—a frightful number, nine of the plague; but on an examination at the Lord Mayor's request… twenty more who were really dead of the plague…, besides others concealed.”

Restrictions to movement planned “to place turnpikes and barriers on the road to prevent people travelling…” As the plague worsened never-failing cures became commonplace: sovereign cordials, anti-pestilential pills and true plague water, seemingly little different to contemporary quackery: boiled ginger, lemon with water and Tito's Handmade Vodka, although the latter might make you feel better. Orders published by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, 1st of July 1665 defined essential workers, laid out quarantine regulations, and restricted disorderly tippling in taverns, ale-houses and coffee-houses. Desirous of flattening the curve they shut people in their houses a “cruel and unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations.” The physician, Heath, directed Defoe's narrator “to hold in my mouth when I was in the streets.” Sound policy then and now emerged and wise voices were finally heard. We might also have benefited from listening to the past, even the recent past; SARS was just 17 years ago.

Already much research has been published about the current crisis, not yet four months old. In Scopus alone the search term COVID-19 leads to 1388 documents (April 15, 2020). Understandably many papers deal with medical issues, but a noticeable fraction relate to environmental concerns with widespread comment on improved air quality during this period of reduced economic and social activity [2]. However, extreme events may not have declined [3]. There are already suggestions that the high air pollution typical of the Po valley of Northern Italy had sensitized residents to the virus and explains some the impact there [4]; similar links have been suggested for the United States [5]. Other papers suggest that the deaths from air pollution are much greater than the lives lost from COVID-19 [2]. Grim statistics are also to be found in the work of John Graunt from 17^th London [6], when severe pollution harvested out the older or less healthy individuals leading to a set of more resistant survivors [7]. The effect of COVID-19 on the urban environment is wide ranging, with observations of the way the quarantines and lock-downs affect commuting patterns [8], sound and vibration [9], urban water supply [10] and the prevalence of wild flowers and animals [11].

Nearly 3 billion people around the globe are restricted by COVID-19 and many will die. These are predicted to be times of great economic loss, potentially in excess of a trillion US dollars. Some argue that the world will never be the same, and Suzy Taherian [12] suggests that supply chains will be local rather than global. In future we will shop, work, and play online, with the digital divide becoming a chasm. Healthcare for all will become the norm. Cities it is claimed will alter as a response to radically changed urban life [13]. As alluded to in an earlier editorial [14], urban planners face a tension between densification and disaggregation. As Jack Shenker points out “if proximity to one's job is no longer a significant factor in deciding where to live, for example, then the appeal of the suburbs wanes; we could be heading towards a world in which existing city centres and far-flung ‘new villages’ rise in prominence, while traditional commuter belts fade away.”

The lock-downs have also changed academic life, with many having to grapple with teaching and assessing on-line. Some have found refereeing and writing away from the office difficult, while others, perhaps with lessened administrative loads have found more time to read, write and referee. However, everyone has been obliged to reflect on the crisis and doubtless such reflection will lead to novel intellectual output on city and environment interactions.