Submitted:
27 October 2020
Posted:
29 October 2020
You are already at the latest version
Preprints on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a wide range of spatial interventions to slow down the spread of the virus. The spatial limitations of narrow public circulation spaces within informal settlements, which house over one billion people around the world, make it impossible for pedestrians to practice physical distancing (or social distancing). In this paper, we propose a flexible mathematical method, named the Cluster Lane Method, for turning a planar circulation network of any size or complexity into a network of unidirectional lanes, making physical distancing possible in narrow circulation spaces by limiting face-to-face interactions. New notions and theorems about oriented graphs in graph theory are introduced. The paper ends with a discussion of the potential implementation of this cost-efficient, low-tech, sustainable solution, and with the introduction of a novel unidirectional tactile paving for the visually impaired.
Keywords:
circulation
; informal settlements
; COVID-19
; coronavirus
; physical distancing
; social distancing
; graph theory
; oriented graph
; cluster graph
; urban planning
; architecture
; Königsberg
; Dharavi
; Christopher Alexander
; slum
; favela
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
