Post-pandemic trajectories of work in the city and public spaces

During the Coronavirus emergency that we are still navigating (summer 2022), public space, despite having the quantitative capacity to withstand the impact of the pandemic, has not proven to have the flexibility needed to accommodate and put its new usage requirements in order. It is therefore essential to interject, as soon as possible, to bring elements of flexibility, organisation and optimisation to public space within the design of the city, which require the engagement of its citizens, above all in its management. This contribution identifies, through both pre and post-pandemic examples and international research, certain trajectories of work for the coming years, with regard to the need to define new standards for indoor and outdoor design and new models for activity in public spaces, in order to render them more practical and create the vision of the “15 minute city/neighbourhood”, as a possible healthcare facility to combat future episodes of infectious disease by way of the flexible and adaptive design of public space, in which multifunctional regeneration of infrastructure could have a more important role.