Epidiemology and urban planning: the views of Sascha Roesler on the NZZ

What is the relationship between epidiemology and urban planning? Sascha Roesler, assistant professor at the USI Academy of Achitecture (Institute for the History and Theory of Art and Architecture, ISA), explores the subject in a recently published article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and with a short video, showing how these two concepts have a common history and future. The problem of hygiene has influenced our understanding of living throughout history, right up to our current concept of a building. "Modern urban planning was based primarily on the need to regulate the distance between people, objects and buildings. In this regard, it provided a real theory of social distance, which views the interior and the exterior as strictly separate areas, defining what to keep inside the building and what to leave out. This classification included both people and viruses or heat," Roesler explains in the article. If we consider pre-industrial cities, these were faced with the spread of infectious diseases such as plague, cholera, tuberculosis, malaria. "Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, in a scientific reading, was it possible to understand the link between urban planning, hygiene and epidemiology.