Urban rhythms in a small home: COVID-19 as a mechanism of exception

The amount of living space we have access to is one manifestation of the unequal distribution of housing resources within societies. The COVID-19 pandemic has required most households to spend more time at home, unmasking inequalities and reigniting longstanding debates about the functionality and experience of smaller homes. Drawing on interviews across three UK cities, this article attends to the changing household routines of individuals living in different types of small home, exploring daily life before and during 'lockdown'. Using the concept of urban rhythms, the data show that the lockdown has intensified existing pressures of living in a smaller home - lack of space for different functions and household members - whilst constraining coping strategies, like spending time outside the home. Lockdown restrictions governing mobility and contact acted as a mechanism of exception, disrupting habitual patterns of life and sociability, and forcing people to spend more time in smaller homes that struggled to accommodate different functions, affecting home atmospheres. For some, the loss of normal strategies was so significant that they sought to challenge the new rules governing daily life to protect their wellbeing.

Integrative Analysis of Rhythmicity: From Biology to Urban Environments and Sustainability

From biological to socio-technical systems, rhythmic processes are pervasive in our environment. However, methods for their comprehensive analysis are prevalent only in specific fields that limit the transfer of knowledge across scientific disciplines. This hinders interdisciplinary research and integrative analyses of rhythms across different domains and datasets. In this paper, we review recent developments in cross-disciplinary rhythmicity research, with a focus on the importance of rhythmic analyses in urban planning and biomedical research. Furthermore, we describe the current state of the art of (integrative) computational methods for the investigation of rhythmic data. Finally, we discuss the further potential and propose necessary future developments for cross-disciplinary rhythmicity analysis to foster integration of heterogeneous datasets across different domains, as well as guide data-driven decision making beyond the boundaries of traditional intradisciplinary research, especially in the context of sustainable and healthy cities.