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COVID-19 and “the trinity of boredom” in public spaces: urban form, social distancing and digital transformation

Hisham Abusaada (Housing and Building National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt)
Abeer Elshater (Department of Urban Design and Planning, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt)

Archnet-IJAR

ISSN: 2631-6862

Article publication date: 23 September 2021

Issue publication date: 14 February 2022

453

Abstract

Purpose

Over the coming decades, the widespread application of social distancing creates challenges for the urban planning and design profession. This article aims to address the phenomenon of boredom in public places, its main influences that generate change in repetition, monotony and everyday lifestyle, whether positive, negative or both – depending on the binding and governing rules of urban shape variations and daily lifestyles.

Design/methodology/approach

This viewpoint relied on literary narration to discuss the phenomenon of boredom vis-à-vis urban design and placemaking solutions in the face of social distancing. It builds its orientation by analyzing the works of nine scholars and five of their relevant theories.

Findings

Evidence from previous studies helped develop three-pillar guidelines that can produce better results for post-pandemic development in the face of boredom. These pillars include recommendations for the trinity of heterogeneity for metamorphosis in urban form, changes in public life and digital transformation in a time of uncertainty on how to confront (un)seen boredom in public spaces. Practitioners should develop new insights into the relationship between people and place by reviewing existing paradigms in urban studies to avoid repetition, monotony and change in everyday life after a pandemic.

Originality/value

The added value here is in underlining boredom as one of the consequences of social distancing and lockdown applications building on the phenomenon's theorizers. The key contribution of this work is the three-pillar recommendation for confronting the boredom in public spaces that happens because of social distancing and lockdown.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Funding: The authors received no financial support for this research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data availability: The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are available in the Figshare repository in RIS format, [https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.15464037.v1].

Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Citation

Abusaada, H. and Elshater, A. (2022), "COVID-19 and “the trinity of boredom” in public spaces: urban form, social distancing and digital transformation", Archnet-IJAR, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 172-183. https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH-05-2021-0133

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited

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