The outbreak of COVID-19 brought with it many new discoveries. One is the power of human resilience and adaptation. The pandemic has given us all the experience of living through what can feel like a disaster movie, but we’ve learned something invaluable: that we are capable of changing our hard-wired behavior patterns almost overnight. 

When the virus swept the world we instantly set up office or shop in our bedrooms and kitchens. We migrated to technology like Zoom for work and Houseparty to socialize. With bars and restaurants closed, we returned to the joy of a good book, or finally realized that project which had been gathering dust. More of us than ever before cycled or walked from A to B to avoid busy public transport and – crucially – to stem the spread of the virus. 

These behaviors didn’t just change us, they fundamentally transformed our cities. As the fast-pace of pre-COVID life slowed we shifted our attention onto caring for our local communities – buying locally, fundraising to save independent businesses, and building mutual aid systems. Some of us talked to our neighbors for the very first time just to ask if they were okay, while others volunteered at food banks. A new altruistic economy bloomed, while proverbial tumbleweeds blew through financial centers. 

When we look back at 2020, the most unforgettable imagery to capture the strange times we’re living in may well be the startling photographs of empty streets and attractions that were once filled with people. An eerily deserted Times Square or Tahrir Square. The cavernous space left by tourists beneath the Eiffel Tower or at the Lincoln Memorial. Ironically, our urban centers emptied out precisely because of their former density. Remarkably, cities only take up 2% of the world’s land and yet infection rates within them soared due to unsustainably claustrophobic living arrangements and massively inadequate healthcare resources, with poorer areas hit the hardest. 

Avoiding our city centers has damaged their economies but it has also had upsides. Along with giving us a moment to pause and reflect on our own lives, or to consider the importance of community, the positive effects of the pandemic were felt on the climate, too. Those viral pictures of swans and dolphins swimming in clear Venice waters back in March were sadly fake news, but 2020 is set to see the lowest CO2 emissions – one of the major contributors to climate change – recorded in a decade. 

COVID-19 has granted us the opportunity for a reset – but if life, and the way that we live it, has been drastically turned on its head, we must take the learning about and overhaul the way that we design and occupy our cities going forward. We are on the brink of a historic opportunity to dream of a future-positive city that is better for all of us. 

Across the world, architects and sustainability experts and government workers are seizing this moment to urgently ask:

• How can we nurture more equitable communities in the face of an economic downturn? 
• How can we create infrastructures that ensure pollution rates don’t increase again, and create more space between people to stop the virus spreading? 
• How can we think big AND think long term when it comes to city planning post-COVID? 

Answers to these questions are already being implemented. In Bogota, Paris, Milan and Mexico City, government officials have announced funds to create hundreds of miles of sprawling new bike lanes. In New York, Oakland and Barcelona, pavements will be widened and thousands of square meters added to recreational spaces and pedestrianized networks – powerfully decreasing congestion and giving everyone more room to breath. 

When the Guardian recently asked four architecture firms to present their ideas for what a cleaner and more COVID-friendly city could look like, almost all of them incorporated more green space. They dreamt up fast-lane bike superhighways, fewer parking spaces and through roads in city centers. Architecture studios We Made That and Gort Scott even looked to adapt shopping areas for a post-COVID society by using digital technology: data, they argued, can be used to monitor everything from footfall to air quality to our spending, in order to engender better social distancing and a more circular economy. 

Throughout the pandemic, meanwhile, we heard about “The 15minute city”, championed by Mayor of Paris Anna Hidalgo and a model that envisions a polycentric city made of “little villages” where you can reach everything you need within 15 minutes, by bicycle or on foot. Industrial, financial, retail and residential buildings would sit side by side more harmoniously, in a future without long commutes and without people living on top of one another. 

Yet, it’s not just the placement of buildings that we can rethink, but how we actually make our buildings. If the housing industry uses 50% of our global resources as well as cancer-causing chemicals, what new methods and materials can we use? 3D printing for houses. Transparent solar panels on offices. Creating building blocks out of recycled carbon. In rethinking city planning, from bricks and mortar through to infrastructure, we can cut down on CO2 emissions while creating space, too. The possibilities are not just endless, but also high priority: as unemployment and homeless in some urban centers multiplies alongside the COVID-19 fallout, these innovative approaches need to be harnessed quickly to create fast, affordable housing for those who need it the most. 

According to the people fighting to make these changes already, those transfixing images of serene city centers and wildlife returning to clear waters don’t have to be totally unimaginable or remain in the realm of fake news and fiction. Instead, we can start to build cities right now that are less dense, more sustainable and better for our health in more ways than one.