COVID, resilience, and the built environment

Abstract

This article provides a perspective on the reciprocal relationships between public and private sector resilience planning activities and the ongoing COVID responses in the U.S. Through the lens of the built environment, this article provides selected insights into how various disaster, organizational, and engineering resilience activities have likely positively shaped COVID responses within the healthcare sector. These positive influences are contextualized within extensive efforts within public health and healthcare management to calibrate community resilience frameworks and practices for utilization in everything from advancing community health to the continuity of facilities operations. Thereafter, the article shifts focus to speculate on how ongoing experiences under COVID might yield positive impacts for future resilience designs, plans and policies within housing and the built environment. Through this perspective, the article hopes to explore those often overlooked aspects of the physical and social parameters of the built environment that may be understood as providing opportunities to inform future disaster, public health, and climate change preparations and responses.