I've decided to disregard the general structure of this newsletter, given the immense gravity of current events. (My, how things can fall apart in a month's time.) I'm writing you from the United Kingdom during its second week of national lockdown. Cases continue to climb, streets have emptied, stores have shuttered, and life as we know it has effectively hit the pause (or reset?) button. Friends and family members have lost jobs. Some have tested positive with the virus. Others are at risk of both. And none of us know when we can start the fraught process of reassembling some semblance of a stable future.
It should be evident by now that we're in the midst of a global paradigm shift, one that we'll likely not recover from for months, but more likely years. What the landscape will look like after COVID-19 — on our streets; in our communities; and throughout our world — is... unclear. That is about as much as I can tell you.
What this ultimately means for our cities (the subject of this newsletter) will dictate what they look like in the years ahead. Urban areas continue to bear the brunt of the pandemic's economic, political, and social fallout. And it feels as if years of work and thought on urban planning is now either useless, or no longer applicable.
But again, we're in the midst of this crisis, and there are a lot of X factors. With that in mind, this newsletter will be dedicated to five questions I've been kicking around in regards to our urban futures:
1. How will retail survive this?
Hard to remember now, but brick-and-mortar retail in cities has been struggling for some time. A lethal cocktail of online competition, unfair business practices (cue Amazon), and skyrocketing commercial rents have placed small businesses — often the backbone of vivacious cities — in a precarious situation. And 'solutions' are short in supply. (Buried in the news: San Francisco's new vacancy tax!)
Then a pandemic hit. One of retail's last remaining lifelines was face-to-face contact, or the strongly held belief that customers do, in fact, still want to come in and browse around. Now that type of movement is effectively restricted across the world. And the consequences have arrived, with waves upon waves of furloughs.
But what we're seeing may not be a total collapse, but rather, a rushed restructuring of sorts. Brick & mortar retail was already being forced to adapt to new realities; COVID-19 is just speeding up that process. Bodegas and pubs signing onto delivery apps; storied institutions going online for the first time; and workers at companies like Amazon and Instacart walking out in protest, calling for improved working conditions, are signs of a larger shift. But it also refocuses attention on all of us, as consumers in 2020.
Now that our routes are forcibly local for the foreseeable future, will this be a time when we recognize our high streets (or main streets, for American readers) more? Will we reprioritize where we spend our money? Which shopping patterns will stick around once this all passes?
2. Will we finally rethink our streets?
I saw a photo on Twitter earlier this week of a street in Bristol where residents actually marked off street (not curb) space for runners to keep a safe social distance. Outside of my window each day, I see people openly walking where cars once drove, not looking because there isn't anything to watch out for. Vehicular traffic has plummeted in numerous cities, and so, too, have tailpipe emissions. The air and concrete, it seems, are finally getting a well-deserved break, albeit temporary.
Cities like Bogotá and New York are dispatching temporary bike lanes to accommodate the new hordes of cyclists, and closing down streets to give people space. (Many others are considering it, or pushing for even more.) This is also the first time I can remember where people are realizing en masse that, actually, our sidewalks are quite shit; which, if we start to dig deeper, is the result of a decades-longs squandering to make room for more cars.
But will this all last? Will we collectively forget that life is pretty nice with less cars? Or will our streets return to the status quo after COVID-19?
(This, of course, is a crisis moment for transport writ large — and it's something that I'll have writing on soon. Stay tuned!)
3. Will we value open space more after this?
Now that we're allowed one 'solitary exercise' per day, the parks in Oxford are alive with people, from sun up to sun down. (Which, of course, poses separate challenges for social distancing.) As someone who spends a lot of time researching and writing on green spaces, to me, COVID-19 has been a reality warp where it seems like parks (or, really, any patch of green) are suddenly the most popular places in town. In cities everywhere, parks that probably saw a decent amount of people around this time of the year have become daily oases in these confusing and anxious times. The mental and physical health benefits that we always knew urban green spaces held — whether consciously or unconsciously — appear not only evident, but also, essential. (Turns out walking is also good!)
Our parks, playgrounds, nature preserves, trails, and other landscapes are a key part of the COVID-19 story. I'm interested in hearing whether people are discovering parks and tucked-away paths that they never knew about, or never thought to look for. And, naturally (get it?), it's worth asking: will we remember how important these spaces were to us after this is all over? Will this be the dawn of a new golden age for parks? Or will we write it off as a one-time thing?
(I'll have more words on the topic soon enough, but I'm sure you can guess what I'll want to see.)
4. How will our communities change?
I'm certainly not the only person thinking about what our social lives will look like after COVID-19. The photos of people hugging; the large gatherings of friends outside, greeting the spring (or summer, by that point) sun like it's the solar eclipse; the end of the two-meter gap everywhere. But I'm also worried that it won't be that simple. When we feel comfortable enough to be together again? What social distancing measures will become societal norms? When will a friend who's not feeling well no longer spark an existential crisis?
In short: how do we rebuild community after COVID-19? I wrote some words on the topic for Oxford Urbanists (where we're rolling out coverage of urban responses worldwide) about the inspiring work I'm seeing in my own backyard to combat what I see as an inherently anti-social pandemic. The positive feedback to the piece has been heartening: people appear ready, willing, and able to help out, and are equally aching for a sense of community, now perhaps more than any other time in modern history. If this is a 'you don't know you have it until you lose it' moment, then there are lessons to learn.
So which ones will we take back to our communities once we sign off the virtual and return to the physical?
5. Is this the end of the 'urban renaissance'?
Nearly every day, Angela and I hear the same thing from friends and family afar: Oxford must be a real nice place to be right now. The low-density small English city, with its spires and meadows, would seem like an ideal place to self-quarantine. (Admittedly, we agree — although we scored livability high here long ago.) But what is telling about that remark is what it says about our rapidly changing views on density.
At the start of 2020, cities were destined to lead the decade. We knew that, by 2050, two-thirds of the world's population would be living in them. We saw that even small- and medium-sized cities were getting a lot of love. And we heralded cities as hubs of research, climate change mitigation, job growth, tech, sustainability, etc. After years of sprawl, people were returning to cities in droves.
Now what?
Cities are ground zero for the pandemic. The virus started in a metropolis of 11 million people (Wuhan), and has since engulfed European cities, like Milan, Madrid, Paris, and London. Now New York is the eye of this great global storm, and warnings of it spreading to other mega-cities are abundant. Density, something that people increasingly sought out as a source of vitality and energy, seems to be Public Enemy No. 1 in this brave new world.
So who will stay in cities after this? Will this reverse the trends back to suburbs, or, at least, hasten the migration to smaller, less-dense cities? What will we fear?
I wanted to end on this note because I've been quite dismayed by the language currently being directed towards cities. On its face, it is eerily similar to accusations lobbed against cities for climate change — e.g. as the source of most of the world's carbon emissions, surely cities must be the problem.
But that notion has been put to rest then, and hopefully it will, too, today. Yes, it is inarguable that urban centers are where an overwhelming majority of infections are, and will be in these coming months. But if we can stop the virus's spread in cities, then we can stop it anywhere else. Like climate change, cities are, by and large, the areas most at risk to this pandemic. They are where (most) people live; they are where (most) people work; and, also, they are where multitudes of people inevitably come together to figure things out. It's where humanity mobilizes, innovates, and adapts.
Therefore, cities are where we will find solutions.
Be safe. Be well. And please do what you can to help.
- JS