De-Urbanised Epidemics

De-Urban Design is a quest for a better life not only for humans but also for the planet because it believes in the indivisibility of living beings and the planet and aims to strengthen the ties between them by regenerating human-human and human-planet relations. It is more social than ecological because it recognises the social and ethical causes of the current ecological problems. The current COVID-19 pandemic is not a reason for but a result of the serious planetary crisis, which brings us wars, deforestation, hunger, climate change, discrimination, soil erosion, totalitarianism, and extinction. Even though compared to the COVID-19, all the above listed other consequences of the current planetary crisis have had more destructive impacts on the planet and life on it, it was through COVID-19 pandemic that more people started to realize the strong links between all living beings and the planet, the vulnerability of our being in the world, and the unsustainability of our consumerist lifestyles. However, various practices to stop the pandemic were far from addressing the planetary crisis that we are facing, and were ignorant to any necessary systems level change, which is necessarily required for a proper solution. As a call to invite designers and intellectuals to take an active role, De-Urban Design Studio launched this 'coopetition' to highlight the importance of a holistic approach to find a more permanent solution. The call was titled "Redesigning of the Concept of Health in Relation to the Built Environment". Academics, researchers, and designers from various fields and diverse geographies joined the team of reviewers and wrote the "call for entries" of this coopetition. Following the successful announcement and publicizing of the call by De-Urban Design Studio, the call reached over 100 000 people and attracted many contributions. The selected contributions in the final stage of the coopetition were creative, complementary and inclusive; 11 of them are published in this book.