Signs of pandemic times: tracing the reconfigurations of urban spaces through COVID-19 signage

ABSTRACT

The ubiquitous presence of COVID-19 signage in cities during the pandemic served to promote and normalise new behavioural norms and spatial arrangements that visibly reconfigured the social and spatial dimensions of urban spaces. Through a visual exploration of COVID-19 signage, this essay examines some of the pandemic-induced reconfigurations of urban spaces in Brisbane, Australia. Drawing on a series of photographs it demonstrates how new rules and regulations imposed as pandemic response measures transformed urban spaces to facilitate disciplinary control in a manner reminiscent of Foucault’s historical analysis of plague management in European cities.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• public space
• signage
• disciplinary control
• pandemic

The impact of COVID-19 has been most visible in urban public spaces. Measures imposed to contain the spread of the pathogen, including restrictions on human mobility and social conduct, and the requirement to conform to new norms of behaviour, reconfigured the urban core of cities and their public spaces in numerous ways (Speake and Pentaraki 2022). New rules and regulations were introduced that dictated how people should behave, interact with each other, and navigate various public and semi-public/semi-private spaces in the city. The need to ensure and enforce physical distance between individuals altered everyday urban life to such extent that it was termed as the ‘new normal’ (Rab et al. 2020). One of the defining visual characteristics of this new normal was the widespread presence of COVID-19 related signage. The pervasiveness of signage around a particular issue can result in its normalisation in urban spaces (Davey 2023). The ubiquitous presence of COVID-19 signage was indeed intended to normalise the incorporation of certain form of control over city dwellers’ relationship and engagement with urban spaces. With this understanding, I began photographing COVID-19 signage in Brisbane, Australia during the first and second waves of the pandemic in 2020. Between April and December 2020, using a smartphone camera I visually documented various signifiers of COVID-19 induced reconfigurations of urban spaces in Brisbane as reflected in these signages. In doing so, I included both public places and what Oldenburg (1989) terms as ‘third places’ – malls, cafes, bars and other places that people frequent between work and home – places that are quasi-public. Here, I use the term public spaces broadly to also include these third places. In the discussion that follows, drawing on a series of photographs of COVID-19 signage, I will present a visual account of some of the social and spatial reconfigurations of urban public spaces that constituted the ‘new normal’ during the pandemic in Brisbane.

Measures introduced in many cities, including those in Australia, to manage and contain the pandemic closely resembled the disciplining of cities and their inhabitants during the fourteenth century plague in Europe as described by Foucault (1979). As human bodies turned into vectors of transmission, everyday urban spaces where people meet and congregate in formal, casual or intimate interactions became a place of potential danger which can enable the circulation of the pathogen from one body to the next. Each body became a potential source of contamination to all other bodies through the space they shared, the air they breathed, and the contact of one body with another. Disciplinary control (Foucault 1979) of the circulation of bodies was thus central to the idea of pandemic management during COVID-19 which relied on compliance to a new set of rules and norms of behaviour. As the subsequent photographs presented in this essay demonstrate, urban public spaces were therefore reconfigured into a disciplinary space of control and management of individual’s movement as well as their interactions with both other individuals and the physical space.

At the core of pandemic management was the restriction of free flow of bodies in public spaces to disrupt circulation of the pathogen. This was achieved by specifying how far each body should be from another in places where they come in proximity as shown in Figures 1–3. Photos in Figure 1 were taken during a commute on a public transport. Inside the bus, a poster instructed the passengers to ‘Leave a gap’ and outlined how they must maintain physical distance while travelling (Figure 1(a)). At the bus stop, commuters can be seen wearing masks and sitting at a distance from each other with each bench occupied by only one person (Figure 1(b)). Moreover, markings placed at fixed intervals can be seen on the footpath denoting where everyone should stand to board the bus.

Figure 1. Travelling on public transport during COVID-19. (a) Poster inside a bus instructing how passengers should maintain physical distance while traveling. (b) Commuters at a bus stop, wearing masks and sitting at a distance from each other.

Figure 2. Instructions placed at various locations delimiting the number of individuals that can be present at any given time. (a) Seating area inside a shopping mall. (b) In a library. (c) Male toilet in a shopping mall.

Figure 3. Humour used to normalise physical distancing instructions. (a) Notice placed on a church wall. (b) Sticker placed on a café counter.

Photos in Figure 2 show instructions aimed at delimiting the number of bodies that can be present at various places at any given time. A banner installed in a seating area near the entrance of a shopping mall discouraged customers/visitors from staying longer than needed by asking them to ‘Please consider your length of stay’ (Figure 2(a)). At the toilet inside the mall, stickers placed on the wall specified how many people can use it at one time (Figure 2(c)). A notice printed on plain paper, placed inside a library contained similar messaging, ‘Only one person per row’ (Figure 2(b)). While these were mandatory requirements, Figure 3 shows that some of the messaging used humour to normalise the physical distancing instructions.

Foucault (1979, p. 195) describes the regulation of space in the ‘plague towns’ of fourteenth century Europe as ‘a segmented, immobile, frozen space. Each individual is fixed in his place’. Similar logics were also present in the regulation of everyday public spaces in Brisbane during the pandemic. The graphical and textual instructions shown in Figure 4 demonstrate some of the ways in which spaces were reconfigured to ensure that individuals had a pre-determined spatial positioning and remained on strictly delineated spaces while shopping and dining. This was achieved by creating individualised spatial partitioning in which each body had its own position in a manner that excluded the possibility of pointless move, disappearance or the dangerous interaction with another (Kakoliris 2020). Points of entry and exit were separated (Figure 4(a,d)), and signs and markings containing instructions such as ‘Entry only’ (Figure 4(a)), ‘Please queue this way’ (Figure 4(b)), ‘Please wait here’ (Figure 4(c)) or large green and red arrows (Figure 4(d)) were placed to ensure that the movement of bodies took place following a strictly prescribed route.

Figure 4. Instructions regulating movement of individuals following strictly delineated routes while shopping and dining. (a) Floor markings separating entry and exit in a cafe. (b) Instructions for queueing up to enter a greengrocer’s. (c) Floor marking indicating pre-determined spatial positioning in front of the cash counter at a grocery store. (d) Instructions outlining strictly prescribed movement directions in a luxury department store.

Regulation of physical space was accompanied by requirements for keeping the hands clean to ensure that any touch, direct or indirect, was sanitised. To this end, instructions were placed across public spaces to encourage individuals to frequently wash and sanitise their hands (Figure 5). Moreover, as shown in Figure 6, sanitising stations were installed at locations where indirect touch can occur. This included, for example, entrance of malls and shops (Figure 6(b)), inside food courts (Figure 6(c)), in front of escalators (Figure 6(a)) and so on. Inside the food court of a large shopping mall, several hand washing stations were installed to both encourage and enable people to wash their hands more frequently (Figure 6(c)). Installations of these facilities effectively changed the spatial dimensions of everyday urban spaces and imposed new norms regarding the desired conduct of individuals. At times some of these changes evoked a feeling of diminished control over public spaces. For example, as Figure 7 shows, the push buttons for pedestrian crossing signals at the intersections were automated to ensure that touch was no longer required. This meant I no longer had control over deciding when to press the button and instead was required to wait for predetermined intervals before I could cross an intersection.

Figure 5. Mural on a street side wall encouraging passers-by to sanitise their hands.

Figure 6. Hand sanitisation/washing stations placed at various locations. (a) Hand sanitiser placed in front of escalator at the entrance of a shopping mall. (b) ‘Sanitising station’ installed in front of a grocery store. (c) Hand washing station built inside a food court.

Figure 7. Pedestrian crossing button made automated to prevent touching.

Interior spaces that are regulated by various context-specific codes and rules, saw the emergence of a new set of requirements to be deemed ‘COVID-safe’. A photo of the entrance of a café shows four separate sets of requirements and a declaration of compliance to a ‘COVID-safe industry plan’ (Figure 8(a)). In addition to those related to physical distancing, these notices contained messages such as ‘If you are feeling unwell … please do not enter’ and ‘By law, we are required to collect details of: All patrons and workers’. Notices placed on doors of a grocery store stated, ‘No entry permitted without a face mask’ (Figure 8(b)). At the entrance of a chemist store, free masks and hand sanitiser were placed under a signage that read, ‘Condition of Entry. 1. Sanitise hands, 2. Face mask must be worn’ (Figure 8(c)).

Figure 8. Instructions at the entrances of various business establishments outlining new requirements and conditions of entry. (a) At a café. (b) At a chemist store (pharmacy). (c) At a grocery store.

As photos in Figure 9 show, scanning a QR code or making pre-registration and providing personal information as a condition of entry to/use of space became common practice. A digital signboard placed in front of a church instructed churchgoers to ‘must’ book in advance if they were to attend services (Figure 9(a)). Signages containing QR codes placed at a library (Figure 9(b)), food court (Figure 9(c)), cafés and restaurants (Figures 9(d,e)) asked users/patrons to share their details before they can avail any services. For any individual unwilling to provide personal details meant non-compliance to these instructions, and thus possible exclusion from accessing such spaces. These arrangements allowed surveillance of the movement of bodies through public spaces while also further reinforcing the disciplinary control over them.

Figure 9. Instructions for pre-registering and providing personal information as a condition of entry. (a) In front of a church. (b) Inside a university library. (c) At a food court. (d) and (e) At two cafés.

As pandemic restrictions started to ease, many people sought to revert to the pre-COVID-19 ordering of public space which at times involved not complying with the instructions given in the signages. As shown in Figure 10, at the food court of a shopping mall where cafes/restaurants were allowed to sell only take-away food with seating areas closed off, some people ignored the instructions by sitting on the floor and having their food there anyway. This gives an indication of how people at times also tried to reclaim spaces that were made inaccessible to facilitate disciplinary control.

Figure 10. In a shopping mall food court while the seating area remains closed, people sit on the floor to have their food there anyway.

In this essay, using photographs of COVID-19 signage from Brisbane, I have demonstrated how rationalities of disciplinary control were used to impose new norms and regulations on urban public spaces to manage and contain the spread of the virus. COVID-19 signage was used to normalise and reinforce such disciplinary control. This led to a reconfiguration of the social, and at times also spatial, dimensions of public spaces in the city. Such transformation of urban spaces can evoke a sense of safety and protection against highly contagious diseases while also somewhat diminishing the sense of agency and control that city dwellers are accustomed to in their everyday urban navigations. A more in-depth and longer-term research on the implications of disciplinary control on urban public spaces, particularly during times of similar public health crisis can offer further insights regarding its effectiveness as well as how it might impact city dwellers relationships with such spaces.

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Kazi Nazrul Fattah

Kazi Nazrul Fattah is an urban sociologist based at Melbourne Centre for Cities, The University of Melbourne, Australia. His work focuses on informal urbanism, urban governance and public policy, climate change adaptation, Southern cities, and international development practice.