Can Sustainable Neighborhoods Contribute To Reducing The Impacts Of Pandemics Like Covid-19? An Evaluation In The Context Of Leed-Nd System

The COVID-19 pandemic, which emerged at the end of 2019 and is expected to continue for a few more years, is continuing to seriously affect people's lives socially, psychologically, and economically from many aspects. This process showed us that designing the built environment to reduce the impact of the pandemic is crucial since the pandemic spread as a result of people's contact with each other within the built environment. This study was conducted with this point of view, and it examined whether the "Neighborhood Sustainability" concept, which promises economically, socially and environmentally sustainable built environments, can contribute to reducing the impact of future pandemics. For this purpose, firstly, the built environment design elements related to the spread of the pandemic were identified. Through a comprehensive literature review, suggestions for the improvements and changes related to the urban design elements in the context of the pandemic were determined. Then, how these issues are handled in the LEED-ND system, which is currently the most known and widely used neighborhood sustainability assessment system, were examined, and some suggestions for the adaptation of LEED-ND were presented. The study is thought to make significant contributions to the literature to reveal the importance of sustainable neighborhood design and construction in terms of pandemics and shed light on the development studies of Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment (NSA) systems.