Streetbeat, Vol. VII
Low-traffic neighborhoods in London, sustainability in Rio, and COVID's place in history.
Salut!
In a semi-embrace of the European holiday (FWIW during these times), this newsletter will again be a bit briefer. I've spent July 2020 learning new locales, focusing on a master's dissertation, and traveling just a tad, safely and socially distanced where possible. That said, I've had less time to write as I approach the finish line of the UCL programme* this September (*proper British English). So, in short: more soon!
In the meantime, I'm going to temporarily return to the original format of this newsletter. Here are a few things I'm working on:
Most 'modal filters' have been outfitted with flowers and street art. (Source: JS)
'Low-traffic neighborhoods' are sprouting up all over Lambeth, the borough I've moved to, as part of a larger citywide push in London to lean our modal behaviors towards 'active travel' (walking or cycling) in the COVID-19 era. 'Modal filters' like planters or bollards are set up at key entry points into a neighborhood, and only residents with local license plates can go beyond them. The idea is to calm through-traffic, thereby allowing more space for pedestrians and cyclists to enjoy their neighborhood. I thought LTNs were a lesser recognized scheme right now (outdoor dining and 'pop-up' cycle lanes seem to grab most attention) so I wrote about them for Bloomberg CityLab! Check it out.
Power lines and bus lines in Rio's sprawling Rocinha. (Source: JS)
When Ange and I lived in Rio during the 2016 Olympics, a major source of reporting inspiration for us was RioOnWatch, a community reporting non-profit that provides on-the-ground coverage of the city's often overlooked favelas. So while media outfits turned their cameras to the stadiums, RioOnWatch was making sure audiences didn't forget the multitude of adverse effects that the Olympics were wreaking on local communities, as well as the crumbling body politic and economy in the background.
So it was a great pleasure to write on the site this month, adapting a class paper into a piece on how the city can get to zero transport emissions by 2050. (Clue: context unsurprisingly matters!) It involved the use of scenario analysis and backcasting (to get to 0 emissions by 2050, you have to be at X by 2040, X by 2030, etc. etc.), which were entirely new techniques for me. If you've read this newsletter, then you've probably heard me say this : COVID-19 has laid our carbon footprint bare. It's high time to think about where we can go from here.
Speaking of Rio, I had an unspoken rule when writing academic papers this last year: either I wrote about Rio, or NYC. Rarely I had the opportunity to write about both of them in the same paper. That was the case for one module last term on international case studies in transport planning; in what was perhaps the best lesson all year, we looked at how informal (i.e. unregulated) transport systems translate in different cities, and why they could be good (affordable, equitable, etc.) or bad (dangerous, pollutive, etc.) for residents. I explored that concept further by dissecting how informal transport functions in a Global North context (NYC's dollar vans) and a Global South context (RJ's motos and kombi). The paper was published on both Academia.edu and Medium.
On a final note, I got another request from a reader (who is definitely not avid fan Jason Bergman) to think further on historical lessons we can glean to better understand this moment, à la the 1970s oil crisis I referred to in the last newsletter.
With each day that passes, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to feel like an incredibly unique moment. Try searching for someone who has answers (family, friends, etc.), and you'll soon find that ages 0-100 are awestruck by how earth-shattering and endless this all feels. Something that has come up in conversations a lot lately (credit goes to Ange for stoking them) is our uniform relation to the virus: COVID-19 is undoubtedly the first time in modern history where most people on the planet had to contend with a single event, regardless of whether you wanted to or not.
An empty Prada at London's Heathrow Airport (Source: Angela Almeida)
Up until this point, anyone could realistically get away with ignoring major short- or long-term system shocks (i.e. Trump's election; Brexit; the climate crisis; Black Lives Matter; the Arab Spring; nationalist tensions; etc.) happening in the world, and act like they didn't exist. But with COVID, you really can't look away — it's everywhere: in our masks; in our hand sanitizers; in our looks at strangers; in our life plans; in our daily emotions. Ask yourself: what was the last conversation you held that didn't directly or indirectly involve COVID? And can you remember any other event in your life that played such a similarly dominant role? In my opinion, I think we're still understanding what effect this new paradigm of grief is having on us.
History, to me, doesn't repeat itself, but rather trickles on in tributaries, forming the stream of time. COVID-19 has elements of 1918-1919, but also the 1930s (economic downturn; growing unrest), 1960s and 1970s (concurrent civil rights protests; environmental outcry; anti-urban backlash), and maybe even the early 2000s (fear over travel). It's difficult to precisely pinpoint a world of mish-mashed globalization, instant communication, populist upheaval and TikTok to anything previous. And that's purely because modernity itself has been targeted: its mobility; its sense of place; its unfettered access. At best, we can recognize that 2020 is exactly that: 2020. There are lessons from the past to be learned, for sure, but we're going to get more questions this year than answers. Whether we like it or not.
What was once a cut-through street on my block. (Source: JS)
"That is a city’s purpose, they believe—not merely to generate revenue or energy or products, but to shelter and nurture the people who do these things." - N.K. Jemisin (h/t Katja Holtz)
Be safe. Be well. And please do what you can to help.
- JS