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This is episode 10 of the Disobedient Buildings podcast, an AHRC funded project at the University of Oxford.

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Our focus is on the everyday lives of people living in ageing blocks of flats in three European countries the UK, Romania and Norway.

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My name is Inge Daniels, and in this final episode,

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I will be joined by Anna Andersen and Gabriela Nicolescu to discuss how COVID 19 has influenced domestic life in the three countries we study.

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Yeah, I mean, in the Norwegian site, we see that certain issues that might have been present before COVID has,

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let's say, become more evident during the pandemic. In Oslo, immigrant communities have been hit harder by the pandemic than other communities.

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And what we could read from from the media is that this has to do with larger families who live together in smaller quarters and also

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the fact that many immigrants in Norway work in transportation or service industries where working from home just isn't an option.

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What we see then, is that these these issues that has become clear during the pandemic like it relates back to to these issues we also had before,

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such as the difficulty people have coming into the property ladder and being

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able to own a home and having to move frequently or not having enough space.

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If one person got COVID, then if you live very close together, then the rest of the family would also most likely get get COVID.

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I mean, in field work, I also seen how I think all residents talk about how noise has been an issue.

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When you live in a block of flats, I think, you know, noise that's always been an issue for people,

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neighbours having parties or if the block is centrally located, you hear people in the evening walking past.

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But what we see is that there is noise reports, both from within the block.

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A lot to do with renovation projects that people have started during the pandemic and the lockdown,

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and also noise coming from outside the blocks where you have youth clubs who have been closed

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for the duration of the pandemic and the youth hang out in the streets instead of being indoors.

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And what we see is that, you know, this is causing friction between groups and between communities.

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And I think, I mean, sound in itself is a very interesting thing to explore when it comes to blocks of flats and when it comes to to architecture,

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because sound quite often, you know, it does carry three walls and over fences.

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So beats like frictions and conflicts that that then go through the building and creates,

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in the sense, also a relationship between people who live in the building or live in the community,

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often like they can boil down to an issue of sound and the fact also that, you know,

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noise can directly affect you or your health and well-being, which I think is key.

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Ana's observation on sound is very important, and definitely it's something that people mentioned about in the Romanian side.

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It seems that the pandemic made people in Romania much more aware of the sound surrounding them,

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the noises their neighbours produce, but also who are their neighbours.

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If before the pandemic, most of the younger people who were employed were busy working from morning till late during the pandemic.

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Many people spend more time in their flats and they had more time to listen to whatever others were doing so,

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other than rediscovering what kind of music neighbours listened or whatever conversations they have.

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People have also rediscovered different other spaces in their home because of the pandemic.

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I have been told that balconies became very used and many people started to buy

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small tables and chairs and started to use these spaces an extra extra space.

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In fact, when we asked participants to to show us images of green spaces,

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some people took pictures in the balcony with the flowers in the balcony because this is not only just a coincidence.

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Many of the parks in Bucharest have been closed and we can judge and we can say what kind of management of of people is this.

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But I think it has to do with the fact that Bucharest, it is quite a dense city with very few parks,

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and whenever people get out, parks are crowded and that would infringe the social distancing rules and regulations.

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And authorities didn't know what else to do, but just closed the parks, which created two paradoxical reactions.

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Some people just remained in their own flats, and as I as I said before, we discovered different the balcony and other spaces,

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others trying to escape Bucharest and felt too too claustrophobic inside of their own box.

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And if they had a house in the countryside, they went there.

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It's interesting that I think our research during the pandemic also showed the importance of the social life and the importance of communities.

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Some people said that in the blocks they felt protected and even hearing the neighbours

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would would make them feel safe if they needed by any chance some shopping to be done.

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They would ask a neighbour to do it, and in some cases, neighbours would help them in other in other contexts.

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I think the fear was so strong, especially amongst the elderly, that many of them have been heavily affected.

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So even for research, it was very difficult to to to re approach people physically.

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I think this obsession with with keeping the distance and not touching,

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not not breathing the same air affected so much people that it took many months

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for them to want again to meet in the small green area in front of the block.

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So especially the elderly, were very much affected by this, and I think some of them are still affected.

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Interesting to hear the different themes that have emerged during the pandemic, and of course,

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that is linked with what we were able to do and how our message or fieldwork developed.

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I think as well. And in my case, until now, I have rarely been able to go inside people's flats.

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So although of course, to the packs when gets an insight to what's going on,

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but I've been mainly been doing walks with people in their area and one of the themes, very much like Anna was seeing, is actually this issue of noise.

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And and it's interesting because initially many participants when the lockdown just opened,

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they talked about empty streets and empty skies and the peace and quiet they had that

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they never experienced both in their neighbourhoods but also inside their homes.

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And then this huge contrast soon in London emerged when, after quite a few weeks,

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actually construction workers were allowed to get back into the city.

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They were the only ones who were given special permission.

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So what happened was they worked at much greater speeds and much greater noise that we've ever experienced before.

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So it's this huge contrast that people mention with this kind of few weeks of almost complete quiet no planes,

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no cars or noise in central London and then all at once, this noise of the construction.

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Work and roadworks erupting because many councils took advantage of people not being here and having all the

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roads repaired and also building like cycle paths and so many changes were going on and the infrastructure,

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road infrastructure and construction work that almost erupted into this noise we never experienced before.

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So that was one thing that was really quite striking. And Gabriela's well by people working at home.

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It seems that people became hypersensitive to this kind of noise as well.

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And just to show, tell you or demonstrate the speeds by which construction was going on was on many of my walks.

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People would literally say, Look, this building wasn't there three months before or three months ago, and now they just all they done.

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We didn't know it was here, so. So that worked very much in favour of construction companies and developers, I think,

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but also buildings being torn down at great speeds, perhaps with less scrutiny as they would usually get, I think pre-pandemic.

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So I think there's lots of ongoing issues there, actually in episode two.

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Danny Dorling really comments on this phenomenon in London, where it's very common for even before the pandemic,

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for ongoing construction, very close to people's homes with very little.

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If you want regulations, there are some, but it's quite unusual to have this constantly going on in your neighbourhood.

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I think that's one of the specificity I think of London as well.

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And then the second issue that's come up is, of course,

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we live in the centre of London and again for three months, people talked about how quiet it was.

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But then soon after the first lockdown, these businesses, of course, which is understandably reopened and they could only serve outside.

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And this led to a number of what we call alfresco schemes.

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So where if you walked into Soho, all the streets after 5pm were packed with people sitting outside?

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So this has become like a mainland European city where people sit on the squares with the streets of Soho became like European squares.

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And although these residents in Soho and some of my participants live in,

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so we're very used to late night shouting and chanting and all kinds of disturbances.

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But again, the scale and the level of this has just been unseen,

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and at the moment they're actually fighting the local council, which is thinking of extending the scheme indefinitely.

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So that's something a fight that has occurred doing my fieldwork that people are struggling with is very much.

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Thank you for listening to the Disobedient Buildings podcast edited by Anna Andersen and produced by Jack Soper.

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If you want to hear more, go to our website at WW Dot Disobedient Buildings dot com or search for a podcast where you normally find your podcasts.