Social Exclusion In a Covid-19 World.

There are already two new verbs that I’d have happily bet a million billion Monopoly bucks and a hotel on Mayfair, would not be the most popular verbs in the World, at least for the foreseeable future or eternity whichever comes first.

These words? Well, you know them already.

They are the new kids on the block - ‘self-isolation and ‘social distancing’.

On their own they are bad enough because they hold so many connotations, but when put together, they are extremely dangerous and threaten to sow much disorder well beyond the Covid-19 virus itself. The reason for this is simply because both of these terms are simply camouflage for one of societies's biggest problems — that of social exclusion.

You might be familiar with social exclusion because of your own experiences as an individual or perhaps as part of a group and it tends to be caused by a myriad of contributors. Things like race, income, status or religion, but Covid-19 has added another to that list… that of viruses. Social exclusion, alongside unconscious bias, is a core problem that challenges inclusion and diversity every singleday,y but now the exclusion from society can be self-actuated and in our current circumstances demanded. Not just in a few homes or towns either, but across entire countries and continents.

But just because so many people are doing it doesn’t make it anything less than social exclusion. It doesn’t mean that the impacts aren’t just as hard and haven’t got the same long term emotional damage that it might have if say a disabled person feels unable to leave their home because of poor design or perhaps a family cannot visit a town centre for fear of persecution.

The challenges remain regardless how you look at it. Social Distancing and self-isolation are forms of social exclusion and we, as a global community, need to recognise that as fast as possible to avert the longer term crises that are likely to develop when Covid-19 has been solved or at least deflated.

Social Inclusion — In A Post Covid-19 World.

Whilst we’re still making progress to prevent social exclusion from all the common sources like poverty, hate speech, homophobia, caste systems, society status, bullying at school, accessibility and visitability issues, we all can’t afford to let social distancing and self-isolation go unnamed either.

Whilst this article is not about challenging the concepts of self-isolation and social distancing and why they are needed it doesn’t mean we have to remove our ability to recognise or abstain from calling them both out for what they are. Social exclusion in all forms needs to be tackled in order to bring about the global solidarity, open networks of information sharing that are going to be essential to combating Covid-19 and future threats. To achieve that, we need to find ways of allowing everyone an opportunity to engage, participate and contribute regardless of their situation or location.

The main way to do this is to look seriously at creating inclusive environments.

An Inclusive Environment is an environment in which all of humankind can access, participate and contribute equally because the human being has been placed at the centre of the design process, goals and creating process of the environment. To be a true, post COVID-19 Inclusive Environment, we should ensure that these environments not only support and directly contribute to our local and national communities but they are also fully engaged and have a strategy in place which ensures they are plugged into the global environment — so that our local communities can network with each other for sustainable global solidarity and global co-operation.

At the time of writing one of the chief problems with Covid-19 is that there is no coordinated response and a desperate lack of international leadership even though this is a global issue. No one person or country can step away entirely. We might have a global economy, but that has been proven to be meaningless without truly global co-operation.

What We Can Do.

Attitudinal changes, or the changing our mentality and approach is the key to making things better. Just as they are with unconscious bias within places like the boardroom in a large Corporate. We need to start thinking differently, and we can do this in two easy ways.

The first is to now start thinking of self-isolation ‘in place’ as an environment of its very own. Just like the built environment or natural environment. We need to design for people so that they can fully engage, participate and contribute in an equal way even from an ‘Isolation Environment’. We can do this via clever design, technology and societal changes to the way we work and live. We have the tools, we just need the frameworks.

The second is to start thinking of ‘social distancing’ as a concept which should be built immediately into all architecture, education, planning, local plans, new dwellings and commercial buildings. We are already starting to think about designing for inclusion, in order to weed out social exclusion, through inclusive design and universal design but it is now time to adapt again — but this time without the lethargy because it no longer impacts on the vulnerable, stigmatised or forgotten of society who are easy enough for the masses to marginalise, whether by accident or on purpose.

We don’t have five years to draw up policy, to mull, to stew over the details because social exclusion is like the big action movie summer blockbuster — it’s just gone super mainstream. If we start with dwellings and the public realm, the rest will fall into place as we innovate and evolve.

2020 AC has created a new world for us to adapt to. We won’t succeed unless we do it together and to make that happen, we need everyone to be involved.

Some Ideas To Takeaways

- 2020 AC, after Covid-19, is the start of a new era whether we like it or not. It’s time to put the human being back into the centre of everything we do.

- Social Distancing and Self Isolation are simply forms of social exclusion that need to be managed in exactly the same way as existing forms.

- ‘Self-Isolation In Place’ needs to be treated as a new form of human environment. We need to plan, design and innovate to ensure that humans can engage, participate and contribute equally by making ‘Isolation Environments’ inclusive environments.

- The concepts of Social Distancing need to be rapidly built into the education, planning and innovation of our built, natural and space environments. We need to halt all current designs and reconsider how they need to change to ensure that they incorporate ‘social distancing by design’. Buildings will finish now are already out of date and will probably stand for 70–100 years.

• Remember, inclusive design is good design.

James Wheeler Is The Managing Director Of Perito Ltd- Inclusive Environments Specialists. www.weareperito.com