Emerging infectious disease outbreaks have transformed the very nature of urban life worldwide, even as the extent and experience of pandemics are shaped by the planetary urban condition. Pandemic Urbanism critically investigates these relationships in a world faced with its first pandemic on a majority urban planet.

The authors reveal the social and historical context of recent infectious disease events and how they have variously transformed the urban fabric. They highlight the important role played by socio-ecological processes associated with the global urban periphery – suburban or post-suburban zones and hinterland areas of “extended” urbanization – changing mobility patterns, and new forms of urban governance and pandemic response. The book develops novel insights for post-pandemic urban governance and planning grounded in the quest for social and spatial justice. In doing so, it reveals a paradox at the heart of pandemic urbanism: urban life enables contagion to spread easily, yet at the same time offers unique possibilities to contain and respond to disease outbreaks.

Multidisciplinary in approach and written by experts in the field, this book is an invaluable primer on the origins, pathways, and management of infectious disease.

“This ground-breaking contribution to the field of urban epidemiology will be of lasting significance for our understanding of the post-COVID city.”
Matthew Gandy, University of Cambridge

“With a sophisticated grasp of urban theory, astute historical sensibilities, and a shrewd eye for paradoxical outcomes, the authors of this timely book show how urbanization processes have produced and been transformed by infectious disease transmission. There are powerful lessons for rectifying the disastrous decisions of the past by embracing new forms of city-making.”
Diane E. Davis, Harvard University

“[The book] offers a rich and welcome synthesis in the various perspectives it covers (historical, geographical, critical). The clarity of its structure and its accessibility make it a work intended as much for an academic audience (students, doctoral students and researchers in the social sciences) as for professionals and decision-makers in the field of planning and development, and more widely in the field of public health policy on an urban and international scale.”
Elisabeth Peyroux, Métropoles

S. Harris Ali is Professor of Sociology at York University.

Creighton Connolly is Assistant Professor in Urban Studies at The University of Hong Kong.