How can cities become healthier, greener,and more equitable in the future?4 December 2020, by Erica K. Brockmeier

In a year marked by COVID-19, renewed calls for racialjustice, a contentious presidential election, and an activewildfire and hurricane season, Penn experts sharewhat’s needed to make urban areas more resilient tofuture crises. Credit: Eric Sucar

When COVID-19 brought cities across the world toa halt this spring, there was speculation that thepandemic would spell the end of urban areas.While massive suburban flight has yet to happen,renewed lockdowns across Europe and risingcases in the U.S. make it clear that the ongoingpublic health crisis is far from over and its manyimpacts are not yet fully realized.

In addition to COVID-19, the year 2020 has alsobeen marked by renewed calls for racial justiceafter the police killings of George Floyd, BreonnaTaylor, and William Wallace Jr. This year has alsowitnessed a contentious election that's seenAmerican cities labeled as anarchy zones, not tomention growing concerns about climate changeas 2020 experienced one of the most activeAtlantic hurricane seasons and witnessed record-breaking wildfires in the western U.S.

Given the numerous impacts of this past year, how

can cities find a way to reckon with a public healthcrisis, systemic racism, severe partisanship, andclimate change all at once? Penn Today reachedout to experts in planning, design, and urbanresearch to learn more about how cities have beenimpacted by 2020 and how they can become moreresilient in the future.

Cities in the 21st century

Because of their role in centralizing naturalresources and ideas, cities have been a staple ofcivilization for thousands of years. Now, in a worldshaped by telecommunications, what role do citiesplay in modern society? "The ability to bring peopletogether to generate ideas is really important, bothin terms of face-to-face, serendipitous connectionsas well as group activities," says city planner andco-director of Penn's Institute for Urban Research(IUR) Genie Birch about the importance ofconnections for economic growth, a theory knownas agglomeration.

While many office jobs are still being doneremotely, she says, current platforms forconnecting can't completely replace the in-personconnections that cities foster. "Zoom approximatesthat [agglomeration], but you lose the spontaneity,the informality, where you could read people'sinterest and body language," says Birch. "Remoteworking has worked, and there will be moreflexibility, but it doesn't mean that you're nevergoing to come to the office."

Fellow Penn IUR co-director and real estateeconomist Susan Wachter agrees. "Once we'repast COVID, cities will remain as places wherepeople can get together to learn in ways that onlineinteractions do not allow," says Wachter. "If youhave new technology that's being used within onefield, extending the application requires creativityand the sharing of specific know-how likely throughin-person interaction. This is what makes aneconomy dynamic, and this is what cities deliver."

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But even if a permanent shift to working from homeis unlikely, there has been an immediate impact onreal estate in high-priced cities like New York andSan Francisco, which are experiencing house pricedeclines as more affordable locations are possiblethrough work-from-home technologies. At the sametime, says Wachter, over the U.S. as a whole,there's been an increase in home prices, withhousing representing one of the few sectors of theU.S. economy experiencing a "V-shaped" recovery."Homes are now where we work, play, educate,exercise, and live," she adds.

Recovery in the housing sector is, however, in starkcontrast from the "retail apocalypse," an impact ofCOVID that is dealing another blow to citiesthrough lost tax revenue and reduced street quality.What might fill these spaces is uncertain, but pastcrises suggest that they could become a futurehome for the creative economy. "Artists havealways been drawn to city centers, and now we willbe able to have a return to that low-cost space thatattracts creative workers," says Wachter.

Green spaces and public health

Landscape historian Sonja Dümpelmann says thata history of uneven political access to publicplanning has led to many cities with limited,unevenly distributed green spaces, a disparitymade all the more apparent this year as peoplesought out natural spaces during lock-downs.

"In the 19th century, when a lot of the Americanurban parks were created, the initial goal was toprovide everybody in the city with access to green,open space. However, it was very rarely institutedthat way, and so we see those repercussionstoday," says Dümpelmann. "Also, the park plannerswere aware that once they were building parks,they would also be raising property pricessurrounding the parkland—what we today callgentrification."

”Silent Swings” by Lauren Bridges, one of the finalistimages in Penn IUR’s “Cities and Contagion” photocontest. The photo was taken at Clark Park, located inWest Philadelphia, in April 2020. Credit: LaurenBridges/Penn IUR

Along with their political history, green publicspaces have also long been a tool for public healthinitiatives. Physicians in the 19th century argued foropen spaces as much as designers, saysDümpelmann. While they knew intuitively thatgreen open space had positive effects on the nervous system, they also based their argumentsupon the "miasma" theory, which proposed thatdiseases were distributed through poisonous gasesproduced by rotting organic material. "They thoughtthat trees were physical obstacles against thosegases that in some cases were also referred to asmalaria ('mal aria' means bad air in Italian)," shesays, an observation that was later accuratelyattributed to less stagnant water, and subsequentlyfewer mosquito populations, in areas with more

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trees.

COVID-19's impact on the 'urban renaissance'

As a scholar and practitioner of urban design,Zhongjie Lin says that the past two decades of"urban renaissance" has led to revitalized andrepopulated cities around the world. Will thepandemic have an impact on this trend? "I don'tthink so," says Lin. "When we think about New YorkCity, for example, the 9/11 tragedy had a short-termimpact, but did not stop the process of itsrenaissance. The pandemic will change urban life,and it reminds us of the risk of fast growth, but italso reminds us of the value of a city and urbanliving. Cities also gain resilience through suchevents."

Through his research on modern urbanization, Linhas seen how cities are being shaped bytechnologies, both before and during the pandemic.Lin gives the example of how technology is beingused to track and mitigate COVID-19 in Asian citiesusing cell phone apps to trace contact—allowing thisregion to recover faster, but he adds that "there's arisk of abusing this technology."

In the future, Lin says that continued growth of on-demand transport, shared mobility, and bikes andscooters, as well as the conversion of moreshopping activities to online platforms, are likely toshape the layout of cities in the future. "Theinternet, e-commerce, and new transit systemsallow people to occupy a smaller footprint with ahigher quality of life, so people can congregate in amore sustainable living style," says Lin.

Stay-at-home orders changed how the worldmoves

Unlike other goods and services, travel is rarelysomething that people do without having someother end goal, explains transportation researcherErick Guerra. "We mostly travel to do somethingelse, and that something else has been radicallyaltered, in terms of our key determinants of traveland our destinations. As a result, there's less travelin general, whether it's by car or by public transit orby any means."

This shift in demand has also spurred a shift insupply, especially in public transportation. "Transitis disproportionally used for commuting trips, andtransit tends to serve downtown environments. Withmore people working remotely, you are going tohave less incentive to use transit. So, the demandhas gone down, supply has gone down, and then,on top of that, less demand related to fear as well."

While the long-term impacts are hard to predict,travel patterns are likely to return to pre-pandemiclevels, says Guerra, but new trends such as anincrease in cycling and walking might continue."One thing about cycling is a lot of people arehesitant to try it, and then when they do it, they findthey like it. Provided that there's a continuedinvestment in infrastructure, I wouldn't be surprisedto see cycling keep on its upward trajectory," saysGuerra.

2020 showcases the importance of the publicsector

For urban planner Akira Drake Rodriguez, this yearhas shown how the essential systems that make acity run smoothly have been underfunded andneglected. "COVID is bringing to the surface theidea that schools are vital components of oursociety, that nurses and caregivers are woefullyunderpaid, that trash matters, all of these vitalinfrastructures were ground to a halt, and I thinkpeople realized how dependent we are on thesesystems," says Rodriguez.

Combine the crippling impact of COVID on minoritycommunities with the deaths of George Floyd,Breonna Taylor, and Walter Wallace Jr., attacks ondemocracy, and heavy-handed responses topeaceful protests, and Rodriguez says that 2020also demonstrated how political participation aloneis not enough to bring about change. "People arearticulating their needs through protests, and we'realso seeing the backlash—they are arrestingjournalists, saying that to talk about racism andsexism in the academy is unpatriotic, anddesignating cities as anarchy zones. These arescary times, and people are putting their lives onthe line to resist," she says.

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In his “Constructing Utopias: China’s Emerging NewTown Movement” project, Lin is studying thecontemporary new town movement in China, includingZhengdong New Town in Henan province pictured here,focusing on the reciprocal relationship between citybuilding and social transformation through the lens ofurbanism and utopianism. Credit: Zhongjie Lin

Through her research on public housing in Atlanta,Rodriguez has seen how dismantled publicsystems make it more difficult for marginalizedgroups to enact change. She's found that the abilityof tenant associations to work directly with thegovernment helped residents achieve their goals,but now, with a fractured, privatized system, it'smore difficult to enact change. "The same thing thathappened in public housing is happening to publicschools," she says. "These are really hard battlesbecause of the defunding of these institutions that'sbeen going on since the 1970s—particularlybecause the users of these institutions arepredominantly poor, non-white people, largelywomen, so it's also not getting a lot of politicalattention."

Postdoc Jamaal Green echoes the sentiment thatthe pandemic has exposed this "zombification" ofpublic institutions. "Our policy orientation in thiscountry, especially at state and local levels, hasbeen a continual disinvestment in institutions,except for police and prisons," says Green, addingthat many of the pandemic's impacts—job loss,housing insecurity, and poorer educationaloutcomes—will also fall disproportionately on

minority populations.

From the breakdown of unemployment benefitprocessing earlier this year caused by thecombination of a massive labor shock andunderstaffed, outdated systems, to push backagainst municipal broadband in places likeChattanooga, Tennessee, Green says that thereare numerous examples which highlight theimportance of the public sector that eventually fallinto a false narrative about what it can't or shouldn'tdo. "We have clear examples of where the publicsector should step in, but the private market doesnot want to see them in that space. So, wehamstring our public agencies, then say, 'look, theycan't do anything,'" says Green.

A turning point for cities

When asked about the future of cities, Birch, wholives in New York, says "If you'd asked me inMarch, I would have said maybe people are goingto flee cities. Now here we are, and New York is nolonger the epicenter. I think once we get thevaccine, people will be right back." But for now,without a firm timeline for a vaccine and with ahuge number of challenges to still be addressed,what does the future hold for urban areas?

"The pandemic, to a certain extent, suggests thefuture state of the city," says Lin. "In general, thecity will become smarter, more interactive, andgreener, as people are increasingly connectedthrough a vast network." As one effort to look atpost-pandemic cities, Lin is leading a cross-disciplinary faculty team at Penn to study how ideason architecture and urban planning are sharedbetween China and the West under the changingglobal context including the aftermath of COVID-19.It encompasses an exhibition and symposia as partof this Penn Global project.

For the "greener" side of things, Guerra says thatthe pandemic provides an opportunity for moreenvironmentally conscious policies around travel,citing California's announcement of phasing outgasoline-powered cars by the end of 2035 assomething that might not have happened beforethis year. "If we really care about climate change,we should be flying a lot less, which we are right

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now, so it if gives us a chance to experiment. If wecan keep the economy going well while travelingnot as much, I think that's a good thing," he says.

This moment is also an opportunity for landscapearchitects and designers to see environmental andsocial justice as issues that go together, saysDümpelmann, and now is a time for renewed callsfor more socially engaged designs and more evenlydistributed public space, and for landscapearchitects also becoming community activists. "Ifwe can get designers who know what high-qualityspace means to design for inclusive environments,we would have much better public open spaces,"she says.

And even under a new presidential administration,Rodriguez emphasizes that improvements will nothappen if people remain complacent. "There needsto be a really engaged public making sure thatwe're going in the right direction and making surethat people don't remain complacent," she says."Staying engaged, supporting the protesters, theseare ways that we move forward and maintain thatfocus on righting some of these wrongs."

For Green, everything that's happened this pastyear should be a wake-up call for renewed supportfor public services, institutions, and infrastructure."It's recognizing that our public institutions fell shortwithout falling into a simplistic "This is why thepublic sector can't work' narrative. We have to beable to reimagine what our public agencies can doand then invest in them, because we deservebetter, and we can have better," he says.

Enabling cities to address numerous challenges isonly possible if they have help doing so. To supportcity and local governments, IUR has resources onequitable recovery, guidance on financial stability tominimize the long-term damage of budget cuts,recovery monitoring for New York, Philadelphia,and Atlanta, and the "cities and contagion"resource library. "This is a public health recession,and it won't end until we have a solution," saysWachter. "At that point we turn to efforts to recover,keeping in mind that the budgets of cities andstates have been hit hard. The hope is that theymake cuts in ways that are the least harmful forequity and growth."

Regardless of what, exactly, the city of the futurelooks like, building future cities to be more resilientwhile having an engaged public will be key, saysBirch. "It's not just being able to operate underdifficult situations, but to take advantage of the factthat you need to institute new ways of doing things,whether it be in the environmental, social, oreconomic arena. People are moving forward,educating themselves and others, and makingdecisions that will result in cities that are moresatisfying."

Provided by University of Pennsylvania

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APA citation: How can cities become healthier, greener, and more equitable in the future? (2020,December 4) retrieved 21 January 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2020-12-cities-healthier-greener-equitable-future.html

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