COVID-19 and Cities

As a city planner, I thought the days where I had to ‘sell’ the benefits of urban living to my clients and the community were largely over. For job opportunities, diversity and access to culture, few would deny that ‘city centers’ have been the focus of urban growth in the past couple of decades.

On March 20 of last year, when the new coronavirus had everyone’s attention but far too many didn’t grasp the make-or-break opportunity of the pandemic’s exponential growth phase, the Internet was briefly distracted by John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

Preventive health care as a concept isn’t anything new or exciting, but there are parallels that can drawn from it to both the current pandemic and climate change crises. Early in the time of COVID-19, the U.S. was caught flat-footed in its response — unprepared to successfully track the spread of the disease and unable to adequately protect many frontline health care workers because of personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages. Who wants to spend money to manufacture and stock up on respirators and surgical masks that may never be used?

If you’re in need of inspiration, check out Tucker C. Toole’s National Geographic story about the work of Chris Williams, CEO and executive chef of Lucille’s, to bring meals to first responders working the night shift and nursing homes in Third Ward, Fifth Ward and Sunnyside during the pandemic.

Last summer, Kinder Institute researchers estimated that evictions cost Harris County upwards of $240 million annually (pre-pandemic figures).

The prescient Peter Drucker foresaw privatization, the importance of customer service and the nonprofit sector, and the decentralization of companies (“Do what you do best and outsource the rest.”) The towering figure in the field of business management also coined the term “knowledge worker.” More than 30 years ago — at the age of 80 — Drucker said, “commuting to office work is obsolete.” Drucker died in 2005, so he never saw his work-from-home vision realized.

COVID-19 changed everything this year.

Around this time each year, we often look back and say “it was a year to remember.” But 2020 is a year a lot of folks would like to forget. While tempting, that’s really the worst thing we could do. The most we can hope for after this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year is that we won’t ever forget it, and instead, we’ll continue to learn from what has happened. (If you’re wondering how forgetting this year is even possible, just consider the COVID-19 figures in the United States for Dec. 18: 2,815 new deaths and 251,447 new cases reported.

Was 2020 the “Year of the Suburbs”?

It certainly seems like a lot of people have spent more time than usual this year thinking, talking and writing about the suburbs.

In the run-up to the November election, President Donald Trump shared his predictions about what would happen to the suburbs if Joe Biden was elected.