




































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 3 (2): 13–18, July 2020 

 
COMMENTARY 
 

COVID-19: Urban Density’s Poetic Justice  
 

Nitin Pandit   
 
1. INTRODUCTION  

Following centuries of pandemics and unplanned urbanization, Charles 
Dickens laid bare the physical filth and amoral inequities that beset English 
society in Bleak House in the nineteenth century. Thereafter, slow but steady 
improvements in science and sanitation have led to longer lives and greater 
prosperity in the western world, despite intermittent setbacks including 
wars, recessions, genocides, and pandemics. The concomitant growth in 
population and industry has resulted in individuals hoping that some day 
they too could add to the increasing globalization of filth and inequities by 
becoming part of the one percent. As for the accumulating warnings from 
Rachel Carson, the Club of Rome, climate change activists, collapsing 
ecosystems, and vanishing bees, we have sort of muddled through, till now. 

Along came a bat, perhaps also a pangolin, and it rattled the entire apple 
cart where greed had become, in fact, laissez-faire. The vulnerabilities of 
human artifacts like governments, markets, and institutions were made 
visible by small edible lifeforms at a global scale. Oh, the inconvenience of 
it all, bringing back nightmares of other indiscriminate marauders like the 
Spanish Flu! Just when we had been lulled into slumber, having controlled 
SARS/MERS and restricted Ebola! We find it convenient to shift the blame 
to some meat markets (Paul and Vanak 2020) and go back to sleep over a 
Bob Dylan rant:1 

                                                        
 Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Royal Enclave, 
Srirampura, Jakkur Post, Bengaluru 560 064, India; nitin.pandit@atree.org. 

Copyright © Pandit 2020. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.252  

1 Bob Dylan, ―When You Gonna Wake Up?‖, in Slow Train Coming, 1979. 

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.252


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [14] 

God don’t make no promises that He don’t keep  
You got some big dreams, baby,   
But in order to dream you gotta still be asleep 

 

2. DENSITY v. SPRAWL 

Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, urban planners have criticized 
American suburbia, or sprawl, as the quintessential indicator of profligate 
and individualistic consumption driven by inefficient use of energy. 
―Network effects‖ became the new buzzword, defined by high-density 
living and intense interactions among people. While increased energy 
efficiency provided tremendous benefits, total energy use skyrocketed 
through the convenience of consuming products and services that density 
provided. The tremendous economic growth that followed was fuelled by 
the convenience of urbanized consumption. 

By March 2020, there was reason to worry because COVID-19 was clearly 
multiplying in the urban centres central to our economic growth and we 
were hosting it. As people are both vectors and victims, social distancing 
became the necessary band aid, but it went against the very grain of 
density—the primary measure and holy grail of design for urban planners. 
Coronavirus changed it all and started haunting urban planners when urban 
centres started seeing its rapid spread. ―It’s about density,‖ said New York’s 
Governor Andrew Cuomo (Shoichet and Jones 2020), having seen first-
hand how increased interactions in dense areas were convenient for people 
and also facilitated the rapid spread of COVID-19. 

Stalwarts like Paul Krugman came to the defence, extolling the other virtues 
of urban density in New York (Krugman 2020), while influencers like Joel 
Kotkin highlighted how the urban sprawl in Los Angeles (Kotkin 2020) 
helped flatten the curve. One knows that all interventions against the virus 
are experimental and, therefore, suspect, even as inequities and the plight of 
the urban poor are exposed threadbare. So, premier thought leaders in city 
planning are moving quickly to retain their place in the sun by calling for 
polycentric or decentralized cities, offering patterns of smart density for the 
new normal (Zeljic 2020). The love affair with urban density is intense and 
not to be abandoned easily.  

 

 

 

 



[15] Nitin Pandit 

3. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRES 

In populous, rural, developing countries like India, city planners have 
quickly bought into the idea of dense cities as a solution to weakening rural 
livelihoods in line with western ideals of planning. Glorified rags-to-riches 
stories have masked over the abhorrent living conditions of the urban poor, 
and dense urbanization in slums fragmented by concrete towers have 
become the reality. The urban setting—devoid of the buffered protection 
that biodiversity offers—created the ideal conditions for the disaster that 
followed. 

It took a virus to show that western urban planning solutions do not 
translate well to the Indian context (Lakshmi 2020), where millions of 
migrant workers in the slums of Mumbai and other megacities have been 
rendered vulnerable to the novel coronavirus and in the government 
lockdowns that followed. Urban planners in India continue to adopt 
western ideas centred on dense urban cores to facilitate transport and 
provision of other public services, accompanied tree planting (CNBC 
Sustainable Energy 2020). The overdue emphasis on constructing more 
parks in cities and building eco-friendly buildings (Mathews and Gupta 
2020) may make the recommendations sound like old wine in a new bottle 
to the poor who are confronted with a life-and-death situation.  

The city of Mumbai—fuelled over many decades by commerce and 
Bollywood—has become a dense centre that demands resources far beyond 
the capacity of natural systems. While defenders of the status quo are asking 
for more investments for the provision of basic urban systems that never 
got implemented (Pai 2020), one wonders why these rich and dense cities, 
engines of growth, have not made these provisions for so long. In fact, 
when provisions were made—as in the case of Mumbai—urban planners 
designed a substantial public transport system to move its poor efficiently 
to their jobs but neglected to provide basic amenities where they lived. 

The theory goes that densely populated areas exhibit the network effect 
through increased interactions. However, they are also underserved areas as 
well as red zones for disease transmission in Mumbai for precisely the same 
reason. Network effects can have a positive impact on some parameters, 
but they are also a ―thick interface‖ for negative vulnerabilities like 
COVID-19. This fact challenges the traditional urban planning mindset, 
where density-driven design is justified with rushed analysis (Fang and 
Wahba 2020) to ensure a continuous stream of investments. Political power 
also grows more concentrated with greater density, and, naturally, the 
powerful demand more resources for their constituencies. A classic vicious 
cycle sets in, driven by the suppliers of goods and services who strive to 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [16] 

feed the beast, which grows bigger in turn with what economists call a 
rebound effect.  

Meanwhile, with the risks being borne largely by those in slums and the 
shanty towns of Mumbai, there is no reason why the vulnerable poor 
shouldn’t be sceptical of who will benefit from the glistening portrayals of 
unlimited or smart urban density. Surely the affected urban poor can see 
through the edifice, which will last at most till the magic vaccine becomes 
available! They may also know that a reinvigorated return to the ―old 
normal‖ will not change the behaviour of critical urban stakeholders such as 
the builder-developers, who are able to glide past most developmental and 
environmental norms through political patronage. With the risks of such 
virulent shocks transferred to the poor, one can hear the re-established old 
guard get comfortably numb again as they chant Jethro Tull’s ballad:2 

Let's bungle in the jungle  
Well, that's all right by me  
I'm a tiger when I want love  
But I'm a snake if we disagree 

 

4. EPILOGUE 

It is obvious there needs to be a better balance than what can be achieved 
by density-driven design alone (Gohil 2020). We will continue to debate 
solutions that are systemic, from A Prosperous Way Down (Odum and Odum 
2008) to incremental ones through a series of lifestyle changes (Bhar 2020), 
but we cannot hide now that the vulnerability of our fundamental 
conception of a rapidly dense and urbanized planet is quite clear. 

Meanwhile, some migrants, disenchanted by an urban system that has let 
them down, will remain in their villages to regain their dignity. Perhaps, as 
Italo Calvino notes, we will remain a part of the urban inferno (Calvino 
1978) or become vigilant citizens. Or maybe some of us urbanites will enjoy 
the return of nature into our concrete jungles and reminisce a bit about 
―Daffodils‖, a childhood favourite by William Wordsworth. But that’s a 
scenario that doesn’t fit into business-as-usual.  

 

 

 

                                                        
2 Jethro Tull, ―Bungle in the Jungle‖, in Bungle in the Jungle, 1974. 



[17] Nitin Pandit 

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