Urbanity is healing

On Thursday evening, I’ll be chatting with a group of urban design and public policy luminaries, Hazel Borys, Joe Nickol, and Jason Syvixay, about the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll be talking specifically about how cities responded to the extreme and extremely unusual conditions that 2020 created. If 2020 was the ultimate stress test for America’s cities, we owe it to ourselves to figure out how -- or maybe if -- it made us more resilient. 

The specific name of our panel is “Pandemic Toolkits at work” and I enthusiastically and shamelessly refer you to YARD & Co’s terrific Engagement Toolkit for Spatial Distancing for one example of what we’ll be discussing. In Chattanooga, our toolkit evolved along with our understanding of the coronavirus, the changing needs and demands of our residents and businesses, and our own understanding of our laws. Like many cities, our tools included new types of small business relief programs, softening some regulations related to al fresco dining, and introducing pedestrians to some previously auto-dominated corridors. 

At times, these tools unfortunately also included the closure of public parks and trails, small businesses, and even houses of worship. Perhaps more than anything, we tried to use the tool of being in constant communication to and with people we were trying to help so that they knew what our priorities, values, and rationale were. Sometimes we succeeded; sometimes not.

I’m planning to talk about a few things that occurred to me over the course of the last year, some of which I’ll admit didn’t fully occur to me until after I was out of City Hall. Here are some points I want to try to make and some questions I look forward to posing.

1. Resilience isn’t always about preventing things from breaking. Sometimes it's about the methods of repairing systems and institutions after they’ve broken. Recovery is resilience and it requires shared goals, shared sacrifice, and trust. Figuring out how we nurture these qualities is the real opportunity facing us as we come out of the pandemic. What are a few small things we can do to engender more trust between people and City Hall, or between neighbors right now?
2. Image courtesy of River City Company
3. Streets are bigger than you think. So are sidewalks. The places in our cities that we usually think of as connective tissue are actually places in of themselves when you allow people to gather on them. What’s one place in your city that was once a pass-through but became a stop-and-linger?  
4. People can be trusted. Bad health is bad business, and those businesses who already operate on the slimmest possible profit margins will do everything possible to stay in business -- but they genuinely want to stay in business, and a reputation for illness doesn’t generally allow for that. Good government regulations are useful and important, but in a public health crisis, a little common sense and good faith go a long way. Employers -- especially small businesses -- actually don’t want workers or customers to get sick. More than once, I spoke to a restaurateur or shop owner who’s COVID protocols were more stringent than whatever City Hall or the County Health Department may have requested. What’s the smartest, safest thing you saw a small business owner do during the pandemic? What’s the smartest, safest way you saw City Hall get out of the way?
5. People may do what the government asks, but not necessarily what it demands. In other words, in times of crisis, people generally crave certainty and will look to authority to provide it. This is why most (not all) people were willing to accept a temporary closure of businesses and public spaces and most (not all) people have been receptive to wearing masks and getting vaccines. When an authority’s response feels aloof, hard-hearted, or misaligned with the needs of the moment, however, whatever small amount of trust you’ve established will wash away like chalk on pavement. Mistrust in institutions is real and worsening, but leaders have an opportunity to remedy this; words, deed, and intentions matter. When did your city leaders get it absolutely right last year? When did they miss the mark?

Image courtesy of River City Company.

1. The city is its own event. Worry less about “programming” and more about placemaking. When you make a place where people want to gather, they will, and then you’ve created automatic entertainment for everybody else. Having one person say to another “It’s actually great place to people watch” is more a valuable endorsement than any headline or Yelp review. What’s the best people watching spot in your city that you discovered last year? 

The pandemic created a tremendous amount of stress, but it also created opportunities for us to reflect on the places where we live and revelations about the ways in which those places functioned -- or not. More than anything, particularly in its early days, the pandemic created a resource even more precious than real estate: time. Time to think. Time to wander. Time for each of us to imagine a healthier, safer, stronger community. 

As the pandemic recedes and time begins to slip away from us faster and faster, holding onto those lessons and fashioning them into durable tools, is how we can actually start building that community.

Want to check out our discussion on Thursday evening? Click here to register for CNU 29.Design For Change!