The Evolution of Urban Planning in Epidemic Prevention since SARS to COVID-19

After the SARS outbreak of 2003, what had changed in China’s urban planning? And how these changes are reflected in the city’s statistical data until the COVID-19 outbreak? Moving into the post-CODIV-19 era, has any innovation taken place in the latest China’s city master planning covering the period from 2021 to 2035? Given the implementation of city master planning covering the period from about 2005 to 2020 and the challenges during COVID-19 outbreak, what is expected of the innovation? This paper attempts to explore answers to the above questions. This study looks at the major cities in mainland China; applies Nature Language Processing (NLP) to the previous and the latest city master planning to figure out the emphasis and the shifts in urban epidemic prevention planning of these two rounds; performed Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis on data related to city environment, health resources and system from CHINA CITY STATISTICAL YEARBOOK to estimate the changes in urban epidemic prevention from 2003 to 2019; discusses to what extent does the statistical data reflect the implementation of previous planning and the expectation of the latest planning. The major cities should be with complete data including: 1. Previous round of city master planning that is the planning period is around 2005 to 2020. 2. The latest round of city master planning that is the planning period is from 2021 to 2035. 3. The statistical data relating to green space, pollution prevention and control, health resources, financial and technical support for health system development. Key Words: Urban Planning, City Environment, Health Resource and System, SARS, COVID-19.