Pandemics and our common life

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis addresses the media (Octavio Jones/Tampa Bay Times, used without permission)

This post was supposed to be a report on my first impressions of St. Petersburg, Florida. It's spring break week at Coe College, and my wife a.k.a. "The Other Doctor Nesmith" had planned a vacation to remember. Then, with the world microbial outlook deteriorating by the day, she pulled the plug last Friday and cancelled our flight and Airbnb. Maybe we could have done it, but was our vacation worth the risk of additional stress on a state that has already had 314 diagnoses including seven deaths from the virus (Sampson 2020)?

So, we're staycationing it, and following advice from doctors and public health officials to minimize contact with other people. It's an unusually anxious staycation/spring break, because we're occupied in figuring out how to carry out our college jobs online: Coe, like most colleges and K-12 schools, is not going to reopen campus after spring break.

Even with the unfolding science fiction movie in which we seem to be living, the relative quiet of spring break has given me leisure to think. Mostly when I think, as anyone knows who's read any of the blog so far, I think about cities. And in the current environment, when I think about cities, I'm worried. (As anyone knows who's read any of the blog so far, I do a lot of that, too.)

I am an urbanist and a communitarian. I am an urbanist because I see the suburban development pattern as fundamentally unsustainable ecologically, financially, or socially. I am a communitarian because I believe our best lives are lived in relationship with others, and not just friends and family but the teeming variety of people around us some of whom we barely know. So my policy responses to most questions come down to stop subsidizing separation and start facilitating inclusion and connection. That isn't quite synonymous with increasing the density of population (see Kaplan 2016), but in most cases means putting humans in closer proximity to each other.

Source: northcarolinahealthnews.com. Used without permission.

Suddenly proximity and connection are the enemies! In the face of a virus of uncommon virulence, we are urged to keep a safe distance from, well, pretty much everybody. Places of meeting--sports venues, restaurants, bars, coffeehouses, libraries, athletic facilities, schools, churches--have either been ordered closed or have closed voluntarily (Rodriguez 2020). Sidewalks, trails, and civic plazas are not closed, but Americans are being advised to work from home if at all possible, to stay at least six feet away from each other, and not to have more than ten people in one place (Sheikh 2020). You might be young and healthy enough to ward off the virus if you catch it, but "Even people who show only mild symptoms may pass the virus to many, many others — particularly in the early course of the infection, before they even realize they are sick" (Mandavilli 2020). You may well slough this thing off without a fuss, but as a carrier you might also kill someone's grandma.

The coronavirus has brought a moral imperative to every decision. Should I go to my office, or work from home? My books are at my office, but I can move the ones I need, and I can do most of what I need to do using the Internet--must do what I need to do on the Internet, because I won't be seeing my students again this semester. On the other hand, I have my own office, in which no one so far has come to see me, so maintaining "social distance" is a snap. I'm here for now, though I've organized myself to move the operation to my house at a moment's notice.

Few things say urbanism like public transportation. I can walk to work, and usually do, but will drive or take the bus if I have things to do in other parts of town--like working out at the YMCA. So, do I contribute to a potential crowd on the bus, or contribute to climate change? Monday the risk I decided to reduce was spreading the virus, and I drove to the Y. But it's unsettling to think the virus is forcing us back into our cars and trucks and SUVs. By today it became a moot point, as the Y is closed indefinitely following the Governor's order. (Meanwhile, the buses are running for free, but are allowing no more than ten riders at a time--another reason for me to leave it for the people who really need it.)

Community gathers at the Balloon glow at Brucemore Natonal Historic Site

I worry that the pandemic is feeding our fears of the other, and that it will reinforce whatever individualist drives make us want to spend society's money to create distance and barriers between us and them. President Trump, who has built his political career exploiting social divisions, doesn't help when he calls it the "Chinese virus" (Forgey 2020). Is this the end of the urbanist dream of people living and interacting in relatively close quarters? Close quarters make for a fertile feeding ground for a virus like this. It's not coincidental that a city like Seattle was the first American hotspot, and densely populated New York and San Francisco have struggled to contain it. Joe Cortright
notes:

The particular irony of a viral disease like Covid-19 is that it is so closely related to a city’s core function:  bringing people together. The flourishing civic commons that brings people from all over China to [cities like Wuhan] for the Lunar New Year, or which makes cities like Seattle closely connected to a global community, are exactly the characteristics that expose them to greatest risk. (It’s little surprise that West Virginia is the last US state to be infected with Covid-19.)

Is this evidence that close quarters are dangerous, and that advocates of subdivisions, gated communities, snout houses, single-occupancy cars, and interstate highway widening were right all along?

(Yet you know what group we're not talking about that is most at risk from community transmission because they're crammed into those evil, squalid detention centers? The themmest of the them, stuck behind the barrierest barrier. The centers are stupid, too: The refugees can't get out, but the virus sure can.)

The optimistic option is that the pandemic, and the enforced isolation it requires, show us how much we need each other. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni notes, "At the very moment when many of us hunger most for the reassurance of company and the solace of community, we’re hustled into isolation" (Bruni 2020). Strong Towns blogger Daniel Herriges reminds us that despite the dangers of cities, their advantages remain strong:

The city is a marvel, a creation as uniquely human as the ant hill or beaver dam is to their respective architects. Its most marvelous trait is the way that cities concentrate and amplify human ingenuity and initiative and compassion, and allow us to do greater things together than we could alone.

They cultivate in us, too, a sense of shared destiny, of belonging to something greater than ourselves. Witness the stories of citizens of Siena, Italy, singing together from their balconies during quarantine: not just any song, but a patriotic anthem about Siena itself.

We don’t build cities for today, next year, or this decade. We build to leave something much greater behind us when we go.

And Cortright again:

When cities work well, its because, in all their spaces, they overcome or bridge social distance. That’s true whether we’re talking public spaces and the civic commons, like parks and libraries, or whether we’re talking the nominally private spaces where we socialize and interact with others (bars, restaurants, workplaces). The reason we find social distancing so difficult, and so off-putting is that it runs counter to so much of what makes life, especially city life, worthwhile.

When all this is over, whenever that is, maybe our pent-up need for human contact will lead us to do more than rush back to the familiar bunch at the office, the health club, or church. Maybe we'll come to recognize that the humans we missed seeing included that person you pass every once in awhile who dwells at the edge of your consciousness. Maybe our appetite for social contact will lead us to recognize that we've all this time been part of a community that was larger and more diverse than we'd ever imagined, and we'll look for ways to strengthen those ties?

From Italy, so far the hardest-hit country in the West by the virus, Pope Francis urged Italians to "small gestures of affection" for each other, particularly those afflicted. "These gestures of tenderness, affection, compassion, are minimal and tend to be lost in the anonymity of everyday life, but they are nonetheless decisive, important” (Lavanga and Talmazan 2020). Important words now, and important words for the post-pandemic era, too.

SEE ALSO:
Frank Bruni, "Why the Coronavirus Is So Much Worse Than Sept. 11," New York Times, 17 March 2020
Joe Cortright, "Cities and Coronavirus: Some Thoughts," City Observatory, 18 March 2020
Russell Arben Fox, "The Coronavirus in Kansas: The First Week," In Media Res, 18 March 2020
Daniel Herriges, "Let's Not Forget What We Build Cities For," Strong Towns, 18 March 2020
Jane Claspy Nesmith, "Swimming the Pandemic," Journal of a Plague Year, 18 March 2020 [first in a series of ongoing reflections]
Steven Shultis, "Hello from the Other Side," Rational Urbanism, 15 March 2020
[ADDED LATER:] Marc Sollinger, "How the Coronavirus Will Shape Our Cities," Innovation Hub, 27 March 2020 [interview with Richard Florida]