The Pandemic City and the Ecological Collapse

Abstract

The current situation forces us to think about the fact that epidemics are ecological and evolutionary phenomena, but that, throughout most of the human adventure, they happened in relatively stable planetary condition. Now, living an era of ecological collapse, the scenario is very different. The places we inhabit have become pandemic cities that have accumulated crises. The current coronavirus crisis is just one more of them. As a category of contemporary analysis, the Pandemic City is nothing more than a hybrid between nature and culture.  Its origin lies in the choice between continuing on the path of modernizing momentum or stopping, reflecting and creating new ways to regain the world in which we live. This is the subject proposed by this article: it analyses what leads us to maintain the pandemic state of the city, something fundamental to overcome not only the current crisis, but to avoid future and much bigger crises.