COVID-19 and Cities

America is facing an unprecedented exodus of women from the workforce. The hard-fought gains  women have made over the past 40 years are at risk of being wiped out by the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year was a tough one for public transit. Thousands of train operators, bus drivers, mechanics and other staff were infected; the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) in New York alone experienced the deaths of 136 employees.

It had been 13 months since I rode on a bus or a train. Ironically — or, to be more accurate, dangerously — the last time I rode on a public transit vehicle was a New York City subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn and back on March 11, 2020 — the week New York shut down amid a huge surge in COVID-19 cases. Since then, I’ve never gotten sick or tested positive (and, working at Rice University, I’ve been tested perhaps a dozen times.) But I still did not want to get on a bus or a train.

As the nation grew accustomed to mask rules and social distancing last year, and a new normal began to set in, criminologists Thomas Abt and Rick Rosenfeld issued a warning: Do not ignore violent crime. Other experts had begun to speculate that stay-at-home orders intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus would also reduce crime rates, but the two criminologists believed that as the country opened back up, homicide rates would increase, leading to an anticipated higher overall homicide rate for 2020.

In the early months of the pandemic, after schooling shifted from the classroom to the kitchen table, many parents worried their children weren’t being academically prepared for the 2020-21 school year. Now, evidence suggests the pandemic’s interruption to education will have substantial and long-term consequences for an entire generation of students.

On March 16 of last year, the bars were closed and restaurants were limited to take-out and drive-through service in Houston and Harris County. A few days later, public schools in Texas were closed. A stay-at-order was issued for Harris County on March 24, and on April 2, a statewide stay-at-home mandate went into effect.

The past few months have been terrifying, but also cathartic. The pandemic has shaken most of us from a false sense of security about our individual health, the efficacy of our cities to provide a high quality of life, and forced us to question many of our daily habits — how we live, work, travel and exercise, as well as how we source the food we eat. Our connection to nature. The primary lesson we, once again, must learn is that cities are not divorced from nature. They are a part of the larger biome in which they’re located.   

For over a year, Houstonians have worked, studied, played and conducted virtually all forms of life at home under quarantine conditions in order to limit their exposure to, and the spread of, COVID-19.

Some have found the home to be a place assured of comfort and safety. But for others, the transition to a complete home life was far from seamless—for essential workers, it was impossible.

“Never say never” is a line my mom often repeats, never failing to provide proper attribution: “That’s what my mother would always say.”

I know Minneapolis well.

I am not from there, but my wife is from just across the river in St. Paul. We still Zoom-attend Shabbat services at a Minneapolis synagogue at which we are members, and whose rabbi married us. I have in-laws and many friends in Minneapolis-St. Paul. So, we followed the news there closer than most after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd last May.