Sustainable Development in Old Communities in China—Using Redesigned Nucleic Acid Testing Booths for Community-Specific Needs

Abstract

The sustainable development of urban communities has attracted widespread attention from all sectors. So, the question regarding how to promote sustainable development in communities has become an important issue that warrants consideration and research. Sustainable development thinking can help create more effective strategies, enhance the ability to organize information, and build a preferred future. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the nucleic acid testing booths in China played an important role in providing fast screening to determine community outbreaks and effectively prevent the spread of the virus. However, with the overall relaxation of the zero COVID-19 policy, many nucleic acid testing booths are currently largely idle. The question regarding how to leverage these testing booths scientifically and reasonably by redesigning them for local conditions is a ready-to-research topic. Based on theories such as future design and sustainable development construction of future urban communities, we focused on old urban communities in China and explored how to use idle testing booths by conducting field research and resident interviews. We thus aimed to explore how to redesign idle nucleic acid testing booths and transform them into products or smart mobile convenience service stations by applying the study’s qualitative results. Through a case analysis, we constructed design models for intelligent mobile convenience service stations in old communities that met the needs of the future urban community residents and promoted the sustainable development of the community. We hope that our results will be further verified via the design of intelligent convenience service stations in other cities.