Simple Pandemic Navigation: Now, With Ideas From Then

In March 2010, when urbanist bloggers were few and twitter was in its infancy, I wandered my then-neighborhood in Seattle and wrote about some easy fixes that would help bring the city out of the recession. Ten years later, amid post-pandemic prophecies about how cities might address public safety, transportation, and recovering local economies, I have altered just a few words-and present the modified ideas below.

Once again, new and old seek to balance against a backdrop of trying economic times.

At the doctrinal level, old battles continue as we emerge from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. The American “new urbanism” style of city remaking-now matured and seasoned with its inherent and neighborhood-based preference for compact development-is no longer overly nostalgic and prescriptive. Rather, automobile avoidance seems prophetic as a way to insert physical-distancing overlays of walking and biking over existing urban fabrics. These fixes will also help address climate change, encouraging non-polluting modes of travel at a time that public transport capacity is limited by the need for protected personal spaces.

As cities evolve, retooled and accelerated ideas offer “quick wins” for a renewed, urban-scale, mask-based lifestyle, with noticeable economic scars on the rise…