People think me foolish when I tell them I caught public transport to Melbourne to get a flushot at my central city workplace. The partial, confusing lockdown had just been instated, whereby everyone was encouraged to stay at home, leaving only for the essentials. My regional service, a three carriage VLocity train, had a maximum of seven passengers for the duration of the one and a half hour trip. It was a midday, midweek service, running with 215 empty seats. The conductors had stopped checking tickets two weeks prior, to prevent unnecessary handling and so help slow the spread of the virus. Those of us brave, or desperate, enough to travel obeyed the social distancing rules and sat spread throughout the carriages. Nobody coughed. Nobody talked. In the seven years since V/Line first introduced the commuter-regulated quiet carriage, I have never seen it enacted so successfully.

When I arrive in the city, it becomes clear to me, urban planners ought to start rethinking a few things. Like, what will be considered a ‘healthy built environment’ in the future? How will we understand circulation and sense of place after this? How will cities design for communicable disease and densification in the future? What kind of new ways of being in public will emerge? What digital infrastructures will consolidate planning decisions and disease management in the future?