A new book—Space, Structures, and Design in a Post-Pandemic World—explores the rebalancing of our physical and digital interactions and what it means for the built environment going forward.
Author Thomas Fisher is a professor in the U’s College of Design and director of the Minnesota Design Center. He was part of the interdisciplinary team that published Turning Point: Shared Automated Vehicles Could Make Cities More Livable, Equitable, a summary of an NSF-funded study. He is also one of the authors contributing to the CTS Future of Mobility initiative this year.
The book examines the effect of the pandemic on our use of land, interior space, energy, and transportation, as well as on our approach to design, wealth, work, and practice. Fisher also discusses the plagues of institutional racism and climate change that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and how these were interrelated. At the same time as all of this, the automation of all or part of many jobs continued unabated, eliminating much of the work that people did before COVID-19 arrived.
The text discusses how underutilized human talent and material assets could be leveraged to rebuild communities and the economy in more creative ways for a more equitable, resilient future.
Published by Routledge in 2022, the book is available via Amazon and other booksellers.
