Growing numbers of older homeowners are turning to equity release so they can give a financial boost to younger members of their families whose incomes have been affected by coronavirus. According to equity release provider SunLife, homeowners who unlock some of their property wealth via equity release typically use the proceeds to improve their own […]
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The pandemic has triggered a reappraisal of urban living, with increasing numbers fleeing city confines in search of green space
Debbie Gould had never seriously entertained the idea of leaving London before the coronavirus crisis. The 65-year-old retired makeup artist had lived in the city her whole life, first in Highbury in north London, then in a two-bed townhouse in Hackney in the east, with a garden “not much bigger than a postage stamp”, she says, which she loved nonetheless.
But the thefts when lockdown was finally lifted were the first thing that started to change her mind. Her neighbours’ houses were broken into. Then some bikes were taken. The final straw came when her caravan was stolen.
The pandemic has turned so many lives upside down and, for Gould, the city she loved had suddenly felt dangerous and claustrophobic. Her local park, London Fields, “turned into Glastonbury” every weekend, she says.
Shaftesbury says 20% of flats vacant as Covid-19 prompts professionals to leave capital and international students to stay home
Shaftesbury, one of the biggest landlords in central London, said struggling high street businesses had paid less than half of the rent due since March, while a flight from the capital had left it with a glut of empty flats on its hands.
The property firm, which owns swathes of fashionable districts including Soho and Covent Garden, said only 41% of the rent for the six months to 30 September had come in. It is also struggling to relet flats, which were once sought-after bases for international students and young professionals, with a fifth of its 662 apartments currently lying empty.
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As the pandemic wreaks havoc on existing structures, we look at some visions for post-Covid cities – and how they hold up
There is a huge, looming, unanswerable question that overshadows our cities, like an elephant squatting in the central square. Will a Covid-19 vaccine or herd immunity return us to “normal”, or will we need to redesign our cities to accommodate a world in which close proximity to other people can kill you?
After an anxious summer in the northern hemisphere, during which those of us who were able to safely do so mimicked a kind of normality with limited socialising on patios and in gardens, winter is coming – and it will test the limits of our urban design. Regardless of whether we “solve” this latest coronavirus, humanity now knows how vulnerable we are to pandemics.
Can we mitigate the effects of the next great disease before it happens? And has the colossal disruption to the way we work and travel created a renewed impetus to organise cities in a more sustainable, more pleasant way?
We asked four architecture firms to share their visions of what cities should do, now, to better design everything from offices to streets to transport – and we have analysed each one – to help inoculate our cities against a disease that is proving so difficult to inoculate against in our bodies.
As the pandemic wreaks havoc on existing structures, we look at some visions for post-Covid cities – and how they hold up
There is a huge, looming, unanswerable question that overshadows our cities, like an elephant squatting in the central square. Will a Covid-19 vaccine or herd immunity return us to “normal”, or will we need to redesign our cities to accommodate a world in which close proximity to other people can kill you?
After an anxious summer in the northern hemisphere, during which those of us who were able to safely do so mimicked a kind of normality with limited socialising on patios and in gardens, winter is coming – and it will test the limits of our urban design. Regardless of whether we “solve” this latest coronavirus, humanity now knows how vulnerable we are to pandemics.
Can we mitigate the effects of the next great disease before it happens? And has the colossal disruption to the way we work and travel created a renewed impetus to organise cities in a more sustainable, more pleasant way?
We asked four architecture firms to share their visions of what cities should do, now, to better design everything from offices to streets to transport – and we have analysed each one – to help inoculate our cities against a disease that is proving so difficult to inoculate against in our bodies.
