Questions on Urban Resilience in the Age of COVID-19

Twilight in Atlanta on April 7, 2020 Credit: Dustin Chambers

By Jessica Florez

Questions on Urban Resilience in the Age of COVID-19 Current publications do a great job of framing the conversation around what pandemics will mean for the future of our cities. I am not going to do that. I’d like to, instead, first offer thoughts on two potential approaches for how we respond as planners to the lessons COVID-19 is teaching us. And second, present a series of questions that we as urban designers could begin to unpack by offering initial observations on conventional urban design topics, such as infrastructure and density, in the context of the virus.

1

Reflective Will we allow this pandemic to inform our future infrastructure?

Integrated Are there urban scales that yield to better integration?

Resourceful Are denser places more resourceful, and in turn, more resilient?

Inclusive Are our natural and human systems working together or simply coexisting?

Redundant Do our transportation and housing systems provide redundant access to people are services?

Take the Shock of the Now in Stride: A Resilience Planner’s Call for Reflection Stating the obvious here, COVID-19 is a bona fide shock, and the scale is worldwide— hence the status “global pandemic.” Less obvious is how to respond to the shock of the shock, and I see two potential approaches from where we stand right now: reactive and reflective. The reflective approach is the one I am proposing we explore as we recover from the present shock.

Reactive. Defined as acting in response to a situation rather than creating or controlling it. This approach will generate two opposing views and many variations in between. One extreme view, rooted in fear, will attack the very things that have made our cities the great vibrant places they are. Think of density and connectivity. The other view will quickly defend these things and draw lessons, and in doing so, miss the opportunity to expand our understanding of the complexities at play in cities.

Both views, if formed too quickly after we reach “normalcy,” will lack the substantial evidence that rigorous research can provide.

Reflective. Characterized by deep thought. This approach embraces the unknown and presents a series of questions that we as urban designers could begin to unpack.

It examines the city as a complex organism and uses resilience principles as a guiding framework to understand the impacts of the present pandemic on the built environment along with potential strategies that may mitigate its effects in the future.

Qualities of a Resilient System.

100 Resilient Cities, a program pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation to help cities become more resilient, has embraced seven principles as key qualities of a resilient system: reflective, integrated, resourceful, inclusive, robust, redundant, and flexible.

In the following pages, I outline observations on a series of urban design topics using these resilient systems principles as an organizing tool. For the sake of brevity, I have paired one topic with one quality, understanding that their relationship is more complex than explored here.

Robust What city services can increase robustness?

Flexible Are we designing and building for flexibility in our cities?

2

Home

1 “If we’re potentially going to get a whole new generation of infrastructure because of this pandemic, then we have to do it better than last generation.”

Michael Berkowitz

A resilient system is reflective.

In other words, it is able to learn.

Will we allow this pandemic to inform our future infrastructure?

Unlike hurricanes or earthquakes, the built environment has remained untouched during this crisis. Yes, construction has slowed down, and neighborhoods will start to see the dire effects of businesses and services closing, but these physical ramifications are slow-burning.

Historically, cities have seen an influx of economic investment after disasters – this is often done in the form of infrastructure investment, meaning improvement of roads, sewage, power supplies, etc. Assuming the same will occur post COVID-19, economic relief presents both an opportunity and a challenge. It’s an opportunity in that we have more time to be reflective and strategic about how and where we invest. In this case, we are not faced with the urgency of rebuilding people’s homes or broken bridges, for example. It’s also a challenge in that an urgency to rebuild our economy may rush these infrastructure investments into our cities; without resilience thinking woven in them. The current crisis offers us an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild better.

Resilient experts claim that 75% of the infrastructure that will exist in cities in 2050 does not even exist yet today. What this means is not only will we need new roads, railways, or utilities like sewage, to accommodate the rapid growth of our urban centers. We will also need new and innovative forms of infrastructure – green infrastructure, waste management, clean energy facilities, etc. – to accommodate for climate-related changes. Lastly, rapidly shifting trends in the way we move and use technology will generate the need for new infrastructure as well. These two, technology and mobility, have caught my attention in the age of COVID-19: Technology. Whether we’re shopping for essentials or working from home, technology has offered the infrastructure we need to continue with our daily lives. But it has done so much more.

It has mitigated risk, provided solutions, and kept us informed. For example, according to an opinion piece in the New York Times, even records of Google searches can help predict emerging COVID-19 outbreaks.

Technology is already significantly shaping our lives, but can we think of it as one of our most resilient infrastructures of the future?

Technology is already significantly shaping our lives, but can we think of it as one of our most resilient infrastructures of the future? In this Forbes article from 2018, the authors emphasize the critical role of infrastructure in supporting tomorrow’s technology. The digital future heralded by many technologists cannot exist without more robust and resilient infrastructure [. . . ].

Infrastructure may not be the most exciting technology, but it is the most important and most ignored.”

In the coming weeks, the world will continue to heavily rely on technology to ensure continuity of services and mitigation of risk. We should then ask, is a new highway or a wider road the most resilient investment for our future? What kind of infrastructure is critical for our futures?

3

Atlanta on Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 12:52pm Credit: Dustin Chambers

Mobility. I live in a city with one of the worst commutes in the country (Atlanta) – to see its highways nearly emptied of cars overnight is surreal. Yet it poses the question, can it be done? In Colombia, there has been a program in place for decades that only allows about half of the cars to commute during rush hour by using alternate plate numbers. Having learned to live without our cars while in quarantine, could we learn to do it once a week, twice a week, in exchange of shorter commutes, cleaner air, and healthier habits? What seems like a simple, yet impactful programmatic change can have lasting effects in the way we think about future investment.

Epidemics are democratizing experiences and do not discriminate between classes… though their effects on victims is a different story.

To illustrate, epidemics are democratizing experiences and do not discriminate between classes… though their effects on victims is a different story. Similarly, our sidewalks and trails, now seeing more people on them, also offer democratic, non-discriminatory experiences. Unlike drivers, pedestrians are neither wealthy nor vulnerable. It begs the question; will we use this opportunity to build infrastructure that is more inclusive? For example, complete streets that are designed with pedestrians, not cars, in mind?

Furthermore, the bigger question transcends equity in terms of car ownership and it points to the built environment as a way to advance environmental and public health equity. Addressing chronic diseases should be as much of a priority as addressing acute diseases, especially now that we’ve seen first-hand how acute shocks like this pandemic are exacerbated with the presence of chronic stresses like obesity and asthma. We know the built environment, and in this case the way we think about mobility, can play a significant role in addressing these stresses.

4

2 Local networks play a key role in times of recovery, mainly because they provide trusted communication channels that other networks do not.

Home

A resilient system is integrated.

In other words, it relies on broad consultation and communication.

Are there urban scales that yield to better integration?

Recent shock-heavy events in the US have proven that grassroot, local networks play a key role in times of recovery, mainly because they provide trusted communication channels that other networks do not. In Minneapolis, where I recently helped lead their resilience strategy, local non-profits played a huge role in addressing a major homeless encampment of 2018 – city and regional leaders were quick to leverage their support.

These networks must be in place prior to emergencies arising. An example of this during this pandemic has been the use of the Nextdoor app. People have used it to locate resources, offer help, confirm news, and implement social norms like social distancing. It’s easy to avoid statewide mandates. But it is more difficult to ignore your neighbor’s pleas.

These networks have a strong correlation to scale. In the world of resilience planning, the concept of resilient districts is forming. Urban designers are moving past regional and city-wide strategies into resilient district planning – an example of this is Resilient Red Hook, a project I have recently worked on. The district scale is not new to city planning, we already work on health districts, innovation districts, and TODs to name a few. But to define this scale from the perspective of social cohesion, leadership and governance may be something this pandemic can help our cities think through.

The district scale is bigger than the neighborhood scale and it often includes services like grocery stores, large parks, and clinics. To think of this scale as an integration of multiple neighborhoods with local voice and power is intriguing.

One of the things that has been interesting in the response to this virus is the impact governors have had because they operate above many administrative boundaries. In dealing with pandemics, where a lot of the risk mitigation comes from social behavior, statewide strategies can remain abstract if not adopted locally by our communities.

Can districts help in closing that gap?

Red Hook, Brooklyn Source: Google Earth

5

3 “For many urban systems to work properly, density is the goal, not the enemy.”

Michael Kimmelman

Home

A resilient system is resourceful. In other words, it can easily repurpose resources. Are denser places more resourceful, and in turn, more resilient?

Being resourceful is about repurposing the resources a system has, but it starts with having enough resources. These resources – hospitals, medical professionals, emergency response teams – have a direct correlation with the amount of people who live in a certain area. According to this article, some of the hardest hit areas by the virus have been rural areas. These lower density areas are the ones who lacked the resources to tackle COVID-19.

Despite this knowledge, epidemics attack urban life. In the past, people fled cities in fear of overpopulation causing the spread of infectious diseases. This pandemic may not reverse the resurgence of urban life we’ve seen in the last decades, but it may create a crippling fear of density, a fear we cannot ignore.

A great portion of my recent work as an urban designer has been around elevating the discourse in urban communities around the topic of density and its tradeoffs. There are services and infrastructure (groceries, public transportation, parks, etc.) that are directly associated with density. Providing data-based information to the communities we serve has empowered them to make informed decisions about their future. When this crisis settles, we –urban designers– will be coming back to work in communities who may be more skeptical of density and urban life. How will we prepare for that?

Community Character

Regional Center

Amenity Index Regional Employment Subway

Active Urban District

The new discourse may not be whether we want to live in urban centers, but how we want to live in them. Will they have the appropriate infrastructure to support growth and will this infrastructure be inclusive? Will open and recreational spaces that promote healthy living be a priority? How will cities maintain social cohesion and communal life despite their growth?

Light Rail Large Park

This is an instance where we have to be reminded that we are not designing future cities to withstand pandemics only, but we also cannot design them as if they will never happen again.

Grocery Store

Urban Village

BRT / Streetcar Cultural Amenities Local Bus

Quiet Neighborhood

Small Store Pocket Park Sidewalks

Amenity Index graphic illustrating the amenities supported by different types of neighborhoods. This graphic was part of a community engagement exercise used in the Turner Field Neighborhoods LCI planning process in Atlanta to inform residents of the tradeoffs associated with density.

Credit: Perkins and Will

6

4 What I do find fascinating is how quickly nature has reclaimed a “voice” soon after our human systems have been forced into “silence”.

This, I believe, is a sign of coexistence, not of collaboration.

Home

A resilient system is inclusive. In other words, all systems work together. Are our natural and human systems working together or simply coexisting?

While I find fascinating the fact that we are seeing Venice’s wildlife return to its canals, animals freely roaming our city streets, and reduced air pollution since the COVID-19 lock-down, I am not too hopeful this phenomenon will have a long-lasting effect in the way we interact with our natural systems. What I do find fascinating is how quickly nature has reclaimed a “voice” soon after our human systems have been forced into “silence”. This, I believe, is a sign of coexistence, not of collaboration. In a collaborative ecosystem, smaller systems feed each other constantly, and the strengthening of one does not threaten the existence of the other. In other words, adaptive strength – strength in flexibility rather than in might or mass. For our planet to be resilient, we need natural and human systems working together, not merely coexisting.

There is increasing research linking human activity with the destruction of biodiversity and the rise of epidemics. While I believe it is too soon to draw any conclusion of this type from COVID-19, we’d be remiss not to use data to study the correlation between our reduced human activity and the impact it has brought to our natural environment. It may reveal behavioral changes at the macro scale which can significantly strengthen our natural systems, and in turn, the entire ecosystem.

Similarly, our human systems are also merely co-existing.

Squatters, refugees, and homeless populations are an example of that. There are approximately 25.9 million refugees and close to 1 billion people living in slums around the world. In the US alone, we had approximately 553,000 homeless people in 2018. While these populations are affected by pandemics in different ways, they all share challenges of overcrowding, lack of proper sanitary conditions, underlying health conditions, and in the case of homeless people, the inability to “shelter-in-place.” These challenges have health officials racing against the clock to control the virus in Dharavi, one of the largest slums in India, for example. An outbreak in a place where social distancing is impossible, could place Mumbai in a grave public health emergency. These challenges also have San Francisco city leaders grappling with how to enforce their “shelter-inplace” order for 8,000 homeless people, with time working against them. The list continues, but the bigger question is, will our future cities make a larger effort to integrate these marginalized groups into our urban systems? In resilient systems, but particularly in the case of a pandemic, if one sub-system is at risk, the entire system is at risk.

Dharvi Informal Settlement, India Credit: www.dnaindia.com

7

5 Imagine future cities populated with resilience hubs in different communities where they provide a myriad of services in times of crisis.

Home

A resilient system is robust. In other words, it limits the spread of failure.

What city services can increase robustness?

We’ve all watched essential services in our cities quickly adapt to our new normal. From grocery stores only allowing a certain amount of people at the time, to major employers like Walmart taking the temperature of their employees when they report to work, these places have turned into resilience centers overnight. In a short time span, they had to learn new ways to cater to the basic needs of the community while learning how to mitigate risk.

This reminds me of an emerging concept I’ve seen in cities: Resilience hubs. Though they vary in nature, programming, and scope, these hubs share a common goal to make their communities more resilient by providing education, services, and resources, and by connecting multiple organizations to work together. The cities of Berkeley and Portland have started some, and now Minneapolis is planning one, to name a few.

The quick ability of our grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants, and businesses to respond to COVID-19 is commendable. However, it poses the question: would future cities see more resilience hubs spur at local scales to fill the gap in times of emergency between private providers of essential goods like food and medicine and the general public?

Imagine future cities populated with resilience hubs in different communities where they provide a myriad of services in times of crisis. In the event of a pandemic, they would be the place where essential groceries, medicine, testing, and health services are channeled through professionals who are highly skilled and trained at containing the spread of virus.

Staff at Atlanta restaurant, Forza Storico, prepare meals for workers at the six hospitals in the Emory Healthcare network that are treating COVID-19 patients.

Credit: Dustin Chambers

8

6 Redundancy of access doesn’t only mean having multiple ways of connecting people from Point A to Point B, but it means being able to access multiple services and amenities by foot or bike.

Home

A resilient system is redundant. In other words, it has backup capacity.

Do our transportation and housing systems provide redundant access to people are services?

On January 2014, a couple of inches of snow hit Atlanta late in the afternoon. That day, in fear of being stuck at work, people began their commute home early in the afternoon. Atlanta, being a city that relies mostly on single-use cars as a main form of transportation, was in complete grid lock by the end of the working day. I was privileged enough to walk home. Some of my colleagues spent upwards of 17 hours in their cars, unable to pick up their kids from school. There were wrecks, stories of births on the side of the road, and cars abandoned on the highway. The city was in a complete state of chaos, followed by complete paralysis, much like the current situation, only differently.

And more recently, a major bridge connecting Atlanta to its neighborhoods on the northeast (I-85) collapsed. Atlanta’s subway system is notoriously limited, with only two lines running (north to south and east to west) This event left a great portion of the population who live in the suburbs and work in the city, struggling to get to work.

Today, during this pandemic, public transportation has posed a challenge as it relates to the spread of the virus. In many cities, single car-use has remained the safest form of transportation.

The problem is, there remains a great portion of the population who cannot drive or do not have the means to own a car. What’s in store for them? How can they access services, and better yet, the service jobs that are keeping our grocery stores, pharmacies and critical facilities open? These three recent events in Atlanta have reinforced the notion that systems that are not redundant are less resilient. When a shock like a pandemic hit, stresses like lack of transportation or housing options are exacerbated.

Transportation modes. Cities need redundant forms of transportation so that when one fails, the others can easily ensure continuity of services. This means having multiple ways to access the same destinations, whether by train, bus, bike, car, or foot. In Bogotá, for example, 47 miles of temporary bike lanes are being opened to reduce the crowding of public transportation in response to COVID-19. Of the 47 miles, 13 miles were car lanes that were converted overnight.

Car lanes turned into temporary bike lanes in Bogotá, Colombia Credit: Leonardo Guerrero Bermudez/iStock, via www.cityfix.com

Housing. This means having diversity of housing in urban centers.

In this case, this diversity refers to price points so that our workforce can have access to housing that is affordable. Redundancy of access doesn’t only mean having multiple ways of connecting people from Point A to Point B, but it means being able to access multiple services and amenities by foot or bike. In NYC, a city that relies heavily on public transportation, having walkable streets and services supported by density have provided continuity of life for many New Yorkers during this crisis.

9

7 “Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. ” Jane Jacobs

Home

A resilient system is flexible. In other words, it has alternative strategies.

Are we designing and building for flexibility in our cities?

The short answer to whether we are planning for flexibility in our cities is a simple ‘no’. At least, a ‘not enough’. Zoning regulations, land use patterns, and infrastructure investment in US cities are evidence of this. An arterial road serves one purpose and one purpose only, to connect people from Point A to Point B. But we knew this prior to COVID-19. What this crisis has emphasized, much like the other points I made earlier, is the increasing need we have to plan and build for flexibility.

In the span of just four weeks, hospitals have been significantly transformed to accommodate an influx of new patients. We have read about sports arenas, hotel rooms, university dorms, libraries, and schools being turned into healthcare centers and food banks, while other singleuse structures like parking decks continue to sit idle and empty across the nation. Flexibility is important not only in the short-term response of a shock, but also in the long-term mitigation of its effects. Think of entire businesses located in a concentrated area in a city having to close permanently due to COVID-19 as a potential long-term effect. Are city policies, regulations, and current infrastructure flexible enough to support other potential uses?

How much and in which ways this pandemic will shape the future of architecture and urban planning is still an open question. But before we go into designing new building typologies and new city policies to accommodate social distancing and health crises, we may want to remember that cities are complex organisms.

The challenges we think we will face tomorrow may not be the ones we actually face, so to plan for flexibility may be one of our most resilient approaches to anticipate future shocks. Going back to the example I made earlier about car lanes being turned into bike lanes overnight in Bogotá, this would not have been as effective if the streets that were converted were not part of a larger, well-connected grid system supported by a variety of services. Well-connected, walkable, urban grids have proven to be flexible throughout decades, yet we continue to plan our cities as if their value was a thing of the past.

These are not revelations offered by the epidemic, but our current state certainly offers us the invitation to think of the city as a place capable of “complex orders” as Jane Jacobs would call them, like those offered by the flexibility built into our structures and frameworks.

Temple University’s Liacouras Center is set up as a field hospital for COVID-19 patients, March 30, 2020.

Credit: Matt Rourke/AP, via www.abcnews.go.com

10