I'll be keeping this month's newsletter slightly shorter than usual. My partner (hey Ange!) and I are in the midst of a move from Oxford to London, so been trying to savor the free time left in this place, preferably outside. Meanwhile, balancing a master's dissertation with other projects has meant that I have had less time to write independently. But frankly, this last month has been so frenetic for so many reasons (remember in last month's preamble when I cited Florida as a COVID-19 quirk? Now look at Florida) that I'd rather just get on with it.
So, where do we begin? Here are another 5 questions that have been on my mind lately:
1. What do budgets tell us about our cities?
I've spent the last three years as a research fellow at Center for an Urban Future (CUF), a leading think tank in New York. Most of my time there was spent researching two vital institutions: parks and libraries. (I've remotely returned to write a brief on the city's costly, protracted capital construction process — more on that in a couple of months.) That work often entailed dissecting dense budget documents, and understanding the vast needs of the systems.
One thing that persistently surprised me was what little pieces these two community assets get in the overall budget pie. The city's parks make up 14 percent of the city's landmass (a whopping 30,000 acres, and counting) and see less than 1 percent of city expense dollars. The city's libraries serve millions of patrons each year — with thousands of classes for the aging, young kids, teens, immigrants and more — and also get around the same amount. There has literally been a parks advocacy campaign in New York for years to dedicate just 1 percent of the city's budget to parks. Just 1 percent! That's all!
For years, this knowledge was largely limited to advocates or city observers; most people I spoke with outside of those spheres had no idea that parks or libraries received so little, and always assumed it was more. (Also, there's a legibility issue: budget documents are hard to read!) But now that's changing. Out of the #DefundThePolice movement gripping City Halls at the moment is also this sudden public reckoning with our spending priorities, and their temporal implications. What does it say about our cities when we spend less than 1 percent of taxpayer dollars on parks? Or libraries? Or mental health services? What would our city look like if maybe we didn't? In essence: what kind of city do we really want?
Even folks who may not agree with the idea are being confronted by numbers that are hard to ignore. And it should force those who care about cities to question such imbalanced scales.
2. How do cities lock in behavior shifts?
I spent the last month and a half culling case studies and design strategies for how cities worldwide are reallocating roadspace in the COVID-19 era for the EU MORE initiative. (Planners and those interested: here's the end result.) Whether it's flipping parking spots into outdoor dining and cycling lanes, or widening bus platforms and pedestrian walkways, one thing is evident: cities are betting big on the pandemic serving as this 'black swan' event that could dramatically reshape streets and people's travel behaviors for the long term.
Lisbon, for example, wants to go from 2 percent of trips by cycling now to 10 percent next year, and the city is building 34 miles of cycle lanes to do just that. I stressed this point in a talk I gave to the Democrats Abroad Oxford chapter this month: behavior shifts like this usually take years worth of planning and intervention. Now we could see it happen in months.
A new pop-up cycleway in Lisbon. (Source: Forbes)
But what's to say that all of this lasts? The BBC asked this same question earlier this week, particularly for cyclists and 'pop-up' cycle lanes in the UK. The key takeaway seems to be that the cities and councils that have been more ambitious and fast in their deployment are more likely to see cycling remain a popular transport choice for some time. (Anne Hidalgo's recent re-election may be another indication of that for Paris.) And the cities that do little will likely bounce right back to their old ways, if not worse. (New York, I'm looking at you.) And then there's always the question of who these projects are really for.
The last time there was a paradigm shift of similar proportions may gave us a glimpse of how this could play out. For cycling, that's the 1970s oil crisis. With gas at $10 a gallon and lines for the pump stretching for hours, the Western world witnessed a 'bike boom,' akin to the one happening now. Families took to bikes to get around, and people left their cars at home. There were even 'pedal-ins' as protests, like today.
But it didn't last — the minute gas was cheap again, car usage returned almost as fast as it left. Because nothing changed: cars were (and still are) an incredibly easy and convenient way to get around, and other options didn't immensely improve; resulting mainstream behaviors often derive from that sweet spot. Now, the same thing is happening, with cars quickly returning to streets in countries where caseloads have lessened. This was borne out in interviews for my dissertation: respondents who drove told me that they were walking and cycling more, yet were slowly returning to their cars as 'things returned to normal' in the UK.
There is, however, one key difference between the 1970s and 2020: cities are making a stand. But time, it seems, is short. So let's see how elastic our behaviors truly are. ***
3. How is suburbia changing?
I'm a natural-born suburbanite, and so a lot of my thoughts circle back to my hometown when I think about cities and how they're changing. (FWIW, it's the focus of my dissertation, too: 'last mile' solutions from suburban rail stations, like the one I grew up near.) And this last month offered an onslaught of new insights.
My hometown on the fringes of NYC deployed outdoor dining on public space faster than the city did next door. Speaking of cycling, it's exploded there, which has inspired my dad (who I know is reading this!) to get back on two wheels for the first time since I was a kid. (Congrats dad!) And the town, which has long heeded the call of the Long Island Republican machine, has bore witness to a handful of Black Lives Matter protests. Signs that read 'Silence = Compliance' hung in windows I've always associated more with baring signs reading 'Stop the War on Christmas!'
My hometown is not alone: suburban towns across the U.S. are seeing activism, due in large part to the fact that the traditional 'suburbanite' is rapidly changing. A person of color is now more likely to be raised in a suburb than a city, which has huge implications for an environment long synonymous with exclusivity and white heterogeneity. And Millennials aren't as urban-obsessed as we may think; in fact, many are moving to affordable urban peripheries, with their political and social views in tow.
But something else is underway, too. In the wake of COVID-19, suburbs are 'thriving' — as The Guardian put it — because most residents are still working remotely. It's the city centers that are quiet, not the suburban streets. I've seen this firsthand at 2 North Parade, a (really great!) local produce store I've worked at in Jericho, Oxford's first suburb. Each day, we have an endless line of customers, who often say they haven't gone to the city center in months. They're staying local for the foreseeable future, and with remote work likely to continue until at least September, that's not going to change. But what if it doesn't stop there?
Suburbs have always held the promise of more (and cheap) space for urban workers. In recent years, that attraction to proximity had grown, with the number of high-paying jobs available in cities swelling and cities themselves getting more expensive. So what happens when those workers stay put? What does it mean not only for the suburbs, but also, the city centers they surround?
4. Will COVID-19 force new forms of ownership?
I spilled a lot of ink in the last few newsletters on the gig economy, and what COVID-19 could mean for freelancers like myself. Given that we're still in the first wave, I think we'll have to wait to see the long-term economic ramifications of the pandemic. But my gut still says that industries will have to seriously rethink their models to survive, and that'll land a whole lot of people in the sole proprietor world in the meantime. (Welcome! Your vacations are unpaid!)
But this phenomenon also has a lot to do with ownership, and what that word means at a time of great change. I recently moderated a panel at the RadicalXChange annual conference between Matthew Dryhurst and Joeri Torfs. Dryhurst spoke about rethinking the financial model for independent music, with ideas like nightlife cooperatives and artists sharing profits with DJs who play their music. He's based in Berlin, where the club scene has been decimated by the virus. And Torfs (from Antwerp) argued for a new model of housing, where quality of life and community ownership are core missions — ideas that come on the back of a global real estate industry that is barely eking it out. I added in my take on media, which was first hit by an advertising crash in 2008, and now, a VC collapse in 2020. Both 'traditional' and 'new' models of ownership = a ton of folks (and friends) out of a job right now.
It's undoubtable at this point: the pandemic was a test of resiliency. And contemporary capitalism largely failed. So what alternative ownership models that are actually resilient to disruption will workers coalesce around to sustain industries in the future? Will structures tend towards profit-sharing, or go-it-alone attitudes? And what role, if any, should cities play?
5. Did we forget about climate change?
Once again ending this newsletter on a positive note. (Sarcasm.)
Last month, I explored a few (deadly) environmental impacts that the coronavirus is reminding us of, namely our waste and air quality. There was so much attention at the pandemic's onset that, finally, we were seeing what the world would look like if we collectively reined in our fossil fuel use. Skys were clearing, noxious air was lifting, and even wildlife (some fake, some real) was returning. We had few silver linings, and that was one of them.
But the news cycle's attention on 'reopening' complications and the Black Lives Matter redux (the latter, for good reason) has left little attention to what happened next: our carbon emissions are returning at rates that even climate scientists are surprised by. Yes, once again, humanity is doing what it does best (cue the Article Circle melting at the highest-ever recorded temperatures), as the short-lived pause offered by coronavirus came in like a lion, and went out like a lamb. Maybe that idiom works — not sure.
Anyway, now that we've returned to 'normalcy' in terms of how we treat the Earth, was there any actual good to come out of that initial burst of hope? More than just clear viral photos of the Himalayans from northern India?
Nice while it lasted. (Source: CNN)
Well, for one, the oil industry is still experiencing its worst crisis in confidence since the 1970s. (Two mentions to the 1970s oil crisis in the same newsletter!) And money is moving to renewables faster than we've ever seen before — but pardon me for watching 'Planet of the Humans' this month, and having less faith in green energy/EVs than usual. BLM has put climate justice front and center, way more than in 2014. And cities are pairing COVID-19 responses with climate action — the streetspace interventions mentioned earlier are declaring open war on carbon-heavy car usage, garnering more and more attention. One particularly unique move that shows promise is New York's 'Cool Streets' idea, where the city's COVID-19-era 'Open Streets' will be sited in heat-burdened communities. That way, people can spread out and enjoy what little shade they have. (Heat and urban planning are intertwined more than we think.)
Cities haven't stop thinking about climate change, because as the frontlines for mitigation and adaptation to the real 'new normal,' they can't really afford to. So maybe we shouldn't either.
The Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona played a sold-out show — to house plants. (Source: Vulture)
"Pop-up bike lanes, guerrilla-urbanist playgrounds, and tactical walkways have been notorious for being politically crude for as long as I’ve been in the field: By design, their 'quick-build' nature overrides the public feedback that is necessary for deep community support." - Destiny Thomas (CityLab)
Be safe. Be well. And please do what you can to help.
- JS