Understanding city culture and the impact of the epidemic crisis after 2020
Summary
Cultural issues are integral parts of the city lives both in Hong Kong and other parts of the world. If city development can be defined as the improvement of people’s living standards, then the focus to enhance development cannot overlook the contribution of culture. For a long time now, global understanding about culture matters has seen significant changes. In the past few years, culture was assumed to be an obstacle to development and a barrier to overcome. However, today culture is said to have a positive connection with sustainable development and is one of the significant global concern. Considerable efforts are being put in place by both local and international planners, scholars, policymakers, and other government bodies to incorporate culture in the many cross-cutting issues in sustainable urban development. According to the Global Taskforce of Local and Regional Government, it is vital to integrate explicitly learning in the effort to enhance sustainable cities. ….the taskforce further acknowledges that culture will be a primary concern to drive the success of sustainable policies and help facilitate people-centred communities within cities. An integrated approach toward development involves considering knowledge, creativity, heritage, and diversity of a given city. Similarly, poverty is another factor to be taken into account. It is also crucial to understand that poverty is not only a state of lacking income and materials but also a lack of opportunities as well as capabilities. Thus, without culture, it is going to hard for cities to move forward…..cities need identity, vitality, innovation, and meaning for their people to achieve and enjoy freedom. That said, this assignment will explore the sociological implications of urban cultural experiences in regard to the epidemic crisis in 2019-2020. Furthermore, it will discuss how the epidemic crisis is transforming the dynamics of cities plus its impacts on city life.
The impact of the epidemics on city life
The pattern of the recent epidemic crisis is faster and is creating a huge impact which is so disturbing. The epidemic crises that were thought to be at a local level can now travel and infect as many people as possible. With the ability of people to fly to different destinations in the world, a person moving from one part of the world can transmit a new disease to other people in a different country within the twinkle of an eye without even showing symptoms. A good example is the influenza pandemic which happened in 2009 and travelled to every part of the world within nine weeks. Another case occurred in 2015 when a traveller returning from the Middle East brought MERS back to the Republic of Korea. In the span of two weeks, there were already 186 cases with 36 deaths. The most latest is the 2019-2020 coronavirus pandemic which originated from Wuhan China and spread to the world of the world like bush fire. So far, coronavirus has infected millions of people with several deaths across the globe. The trend of the 21st epidemics is so contagious and can spread more rapidly and affect millions of people within a very short time. Besides massive infections, the outbreaks can also a huge negative impact on the economy of a country and change the global economy by disrupting trade, livelihoods, and travel. Given the high mobility rate of people, urbanization, and the effects of globalization, chances are the next emerging epidemic will spread quickly and far. However, based on past experience, it is possible to detect and predict where the virus starts spreading and its behaviour. But again it is possible that when the virus arrives there will be delays in detecting the virus, intense impact on trade and travel, and public panic and anxiety…. The logic behind global health security is for every society to be able to provide medical care to her population, thus being able to reduce the impact of such epidemics during outbreaks. This concept entails all measures that provide global protection in regard to the risk of infectious diseases along with the revised international health regulations……however, in order to achieve the intended safe, healthy standards across the world, there should be awareness, collaboration and corporation from all the member countries, organizations, communities, and agencies. With the scientific uncertainty surrounding these emerging diseases, the situation even calls for increased global awareness and corporations between individual countries to improve crisis response. The recent 2019-2020 corona outbreak shows how hard pandemics can also be to those developed cities with excellent public health systems.
How culture influences the spread of infectious diseases within cities
Culture shapes how people live in cities around the globe. Humans residing within cities are all biological and exist within particular cultures. Therefore when such life-threatening pandemics spread to the world, people can cope with the situation through cultural ways. While human bodies will have biological reactions, people belong to different cultures, and they will react depending on their way of life, economic systems, family structures, and cosmologies. So the extent at which the disease can impact a specific community will rely on their particular behaviours and actions. Social practices have been depicted to be a significant influence in major pandemics in history. For instance, the historic influenza pandemic of 1918 was significantly affected by the movement of people and press censorship in regard to wartime restrictions. In other cases, cultural behaviour can also change the efforts to achieving sustainable city life, for example, the resistance from people towards the measles vaccine among groups in the U.S and other parts in Europe. Interestingly, research also shows that individuals rejecting vaccines in America are not under-privileged or uneducated. But do it as a result of cultural beliefs……to attain global awareness of infectious and preventable diseases, health care officials and other concerned bodies need to rethink on how to deal with cultural issues. In other cases, some cultures have been seen to be more prevalent than others. For instance, about COVID-19 outbreak, immigrant population and other minority groups have borne the blame of spreading the virus in Asia. Similarly, the poor and the immigrants also received blames for the spread of tuberculosis in the Victorian time. Therefore communities need to work together to create awareness and mitigate the social, cultural barriers to achieve sustainable cities.
How Strengthening health systems can lead to the sustainable development of cities
In order to reduce the impact of epidemic crises on city dwellers, countries need to protect their health systems along with that of the health care providers to ensure routine health services during and after the outbreaks. Severe epidemics put even robust health systems in enormous pressure and tension, so there is a need to continue improving healthcare facilities globally. Usually, the sudden increase in numbers seeking medical attention in health centres stretches these facility’s’ resources and capacity even where these systems are already over-stretched. When such crises occur, it draws the medical respondents’ attention, and most of them tend to monopolize most financial resources, systems, medical, and products to respond to the current situation. Such diverted attention usually leads to neglect of regular and basic health essentials. In such cases, patients with health issues unrelated to the current emergency find it daunting to seek or access medical care. Furthermore, some may die if the systems are over-stretched, and this increases the mortality rate of other diseases. During the epidemics, healthcare settings may become possible hubs of transmission. If proper prevention measures are not implemented, many people can get infected in emergency areas or wards, and this becomes significant when dealing with the unknown, emerging diseases. A delay in the detection of a disease may lead to delays in treatment. Which, in turn, will cause more infections to other people because healthcare providers, other patients and even other family members may not be aware of any appropriate measure to help protect themselves. However, with the expensive lessons leant from the covid-19 outbreak, healthcare facilities and systems will change for the better. In the poor and developing countries with a shortage of health care workers and resources, such as epidemics ruins and ultimately weakens the healthcare systems. Since it takes time to train medical caregivers and restructure the health facilities, these countries continue to strain their resources in the effort to provide general medical services. It is then essential to implement long term sustainable investments to strengthen and secure the available health systems to enable them to handle any similar situation in the future. Moreover, technological plans and access to crucial medical essentials can help achieve a sustainable healthy environment that will be able to improve lives
The new lifestyle in cities facilitates the transmission of disease.
This happens through either human to human contacts or people and animals. This is due to increased global changes that have increased the mobility of people. Unlike the past days, today there is more interconnectivity in terms of international trade and travel are on the rise and the significant megacities, which are the primary transport centres for ships, trains, aircraft, and vehicles, are now interconnected. Similarly, globalization translates to increased trade and movement of people between countries. For many years, people have been relocating from the rural area to urban areas in search of better lives and income. Thus, the increased globalization and population of city dwellers increases the risk of transmitting highly infectious diseases. The risk affects the densely and least populated areas alike. It even becomes riskier to those areas overlapping with rural areas, at such points contacts between human to human and people to animals are high, which poses more significant risks of transmitting diseases. People in rural areas keep repeated contacts to domestic animals which in turn come into contact with wild animals, thus increasing the risk of contracting new infections. At the semi-urban, poverty rates tend to be high, and the health care facilities tend to be underdeveloped. Therefore, if an epidemic originates here, there is a likelihood it may not be detected or even treated. A perfect example of this scenario is the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. In the same note, the 21st century has been characterized by several humanitarian emergencies that have resulted in catastrophic situations. There has been human displacement either because of war conflicts, civil unrest, natural disasters, and political instability. Many people have been forced out of their homes to become asylum seekers, economic migrants or refugees who find themselves living in congested areas. Similarly, swelling cities are expanding, and the available land is being utilized for food production and other agricultural practices. These new lifestyles increase the chances of human to animal contact hence increasing the risk of infections. Besides lifestyle, different ecological dynamics like climate change also facilitates disease transmissions.