In Public Space, Pandemic Patterns Emerge
If anyone doubted how concerns for public safety and associated protective rules guide human behavior, take a look at the seating configurations depicted above. In my mind, I hear Fred Kent, Kathy Madden, and other inheritors of William H. Whyte’s legacy.
“I told you so,” they say, as public spaces contextually reconfigure based on distancing-defined “pandemic patterns.”
However, at dusk, or on the weekends, just a short walk away, things change. The indoor-outdoor scenes like the Twickenham example below correlate with newly reported cases of the coronavirus around the world.
If nothing more, these two photographs are a study in contrasts, a “teaching moment” of the sort I’ve identified before. What, in the end, can we learn?
Originally published at https://sustainingplace.com on August 5, 2020.