Earlier this year, as our global cities went into lock-down, stark images of deserted streets, plaza, parks, and promenades flooded the internet. The disappearance of the once vibrant public realm in bustling metropolises convinced many people that the great ‘urban exodus’ has finally arrived! But if we’ve learned anything from urban history, it is that public health crises have always paved the way for safer and better cities, with the public realm at its heart. In the 19th century, cholera and malaria outbreaks in London led to the creation of the modern underground sewerage system. Multiple waves of plagues prompted government officials in Europe to create wider, straighter, and cleaner streets. In the US, Spanish flu led to a decongestion of the public transport system and the Yellow fever prompted cities to be more vigilant with solid waste collection and handling. Central Park in New York, the boulevards of Paris, and many other widely celebrated public spaces were also created in response to public health crises. So, let’s take a moment to understand why public spaces are vital for cities and people.
Urbanists have long believed that public spaces are the measure of a city’s greatness as they truly reflect the city’s soul, its richness, and diversity. Public spaces are cherished as they foster social interaction, support economic exchange, promote well-being, and boost cultural and civic expression. Epidemiological studies emphasize that access to public and green spaces is crucial for human and urban health. Green public spaces reduce environmental health risks associated with urban living by improving air and water quality, lowering exposure to excess heat, buffering noise pollution, preventing soil erosion, increasing groundwater recharge, and mitigating impacts of extreme climate events. Access to public spaces also improves pregnancy outcomes, reduces the risk of low birth weight, and reduces infant-maternal mortality. Public spaces increase physical fitness, improve cardiovascular health, immune system, neurocognitive development, and reduce the risk of obesity and diabetes. Public spaces improve overall mental health and productivity by boosting social interactions, lowering stress, anxiety, depression, and mental fatigue.
Even when nations were in lock-down, people around the world took it to the streets to protest injustice and inequalities, cementing the notion that public spaces are a physical representation of democracy. And as the lock-down eased, thousands of people eagerly turned to public spaces for recovery.
Public Spaces during COVID-19 times
Public spaces have changed during these times. We see people walking everywhere with masks; other measures to ensure social distancing in the public sphere govern the cityscapes. Although each city is tailoring their coping and recovery strategies to accommodate the unique needs of its citizens, one can draw commonalities in their responses:
Re-imagining Streets
Since the dawn of cities, streets have been the most popular public space. Increasing demand for space, fast-moving vehicles, and hostile socio-political environments have brought a “conceptual and physical shift” in our approach to streets, making them a highly contested space. For example, Asian streets traditionally known to perfectly balance socio-economic activities with mobility demands have succumbed to development pressure and often prioritize automobiles over other users. The car-centric approach to streets led to a worldwide wave of street reclamation movements like “Livable Streets”, “Happy Streets” and “Complete Streets”.
The pandemic has expanded those once-in-a-while events into an everyday reality with city initiatives like ‘Slow Streets’, ‘Healthy Streets’, and ‘Open Streets’. These initiatives restrict vehicular traffic to accommodate physical distancing. With the increasing fleet of cyclists, pop-up bike lanes dominate the streetscape in major metropolises like Paris, Berlin, Budapest, London, Milan, Brussels, Bogota, and Barcelona. New York City and Oakland closed down 100 miles and 74 miles of streets to cars respectively, opening them solely for cyclists and pedestrians. Streets worldwide finally seem to restore the balance between income generation, recreation, and mobility by transforming street space into open-air eateries (in Europe and the US) and bazaars (in South Asia).
Re-purposing Other Public Space
For years, planners and designers have been urging cities to expand their public space coverage by incorporating unconventional and underutilized spaces. This pandemic gave cities the opportunity to do exactly that!
In the absence of heavy vehicular traffic, numerous cities converted parking lots, parking lanes, and other vacant lands into urban parks. Dublin converted its loading bays and parking spaces to enable social distancing in congested areas. These tactics have especially benefited communities that either don’t live in the vicinity of a regular park or have access to disproportionately smaller parks and public spaces.
Cities are also exploring the idea to turn golf-courses, soccer fields, college grounds, and other open-air event avenues into temporary urban parks. In South Korea, public corporations turned the soccer fields into exam halls to host the employment exam amidst the pandemic. In Ahmedabad, India, shopping malls were used to house stranded migrant workers and slum dwellers from “affected areas”.
The pandemic has highlighted cities’ capacity to swiftly bring significant changes in the public realm. And we’re hoping many of these changes remain intact in the post-pandemic cityscape.
Rebooting for Intensified Usage
The pandemic has brought the spotlight back to parks, gardens and other green spaces. Neighborhood parks and alleys saw a surge of users when the stay-at-home orders were issued. Upon relaxing these orders, people rushed to larger open spaces like city parks, beaches, waterfronts, nature trails, state, and national parks. For example, Pennsylvania’s Presque Isle State Park alone saw a 165% increase in visitors during late March 2020. Unmanageable crowds forced the officials to close-down parks and open spaces for visitors. They reopened with social distancing norms and emergency services like shelters, testing centers, and daycare for staff’s and first respondents’ children.
Images of people flocking the beaches of Australia and the US are also etched into our quarantine memories. To ensure safe physical distance between thousands of lounging and sun-bathing visitors, cities demarcated distant boxes with ropes on beaches. Brighton, UK suspended vehicular traffic along Madeira Drive, the city's popular seafront road to create extra adjoining space along the beaches.
Public Spaces in the post-pandemic world
While we all wonder about the future of public spaces, Janette Sadik-Khan, former commissioner of New York City Department of Transportation, believes cities must utilize this opportunity to evaluate and reinvent. In an interview regarding future mobility plans, she said: “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a fresh look at your streets and make sure that they are set to achieve the outcomes that we want to achieve: not just moving cars as fast as possible from point A to point B, but making it possible for everyone to get around safely.” And we couldn’t agree more!
Although it is too soon to be predicting the impacts of the pandemic on our urban fabrics, we’ve put together key questions that could transform our cities for good.
Will we restore dignity for pedestrians and other non-motorized transit users?
Non-motorized transport users face constant conflict with vehicular traffic, affecting their mobility and dignity. A 2018 report on the global status of road safety by WHO states that pedestrians and cyclists make one-third of the total road accident deaths in low- and middle-income countries.
COVID-19 crisis made reimagining streets for people, instead of automobiles, a mandate! Due to a surge in walking and bicycling, cities across the globe are closing their streets for cars to ensure safe distance while walking, cycling, shopping, dining, and at leisure. Many European cities have plans to keep the cars out of their city centers in the post-pandemic world. 35 km of road space in Milan’s city core will be remodeled for bikes and pedestrians only. Rome’s Mayor, Virginia Raggi announced plans to make the 150 km pop-up bicycle network, created to support social distancing, permanent. Belgian capital, Brussels’ city core will also become a priority zone for cyclists and pedestrians, with a maximum speed limit of 20 kmph for cars. Paris added 650 km of cycleways in response to the pandemic and will soon implement a new network of nine long-distance cycleways connecting the city center to the suburbs. The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo said It is impossible for Paris to return to a car-dominant street design.
Joining the European cities, Seattle has also announced to restrict vehicular traffic in about 32 km of city streets. Vancouver’s Stanley Park closed to vehicular traffic during the pandemic and is likely to have permanent closure for automobiles.
Like sustainability and pro-pedestrian advocates, we believe that this pandemic has the potential to bring a permanent shift in our approach to the streets. With the increasing popularity of ‘Streateries’ (open-air cafes), pop-up bike lanes, Slow streets/Open Streets, and repurposed vacant lots, we hope that pedestrian and cyclist dignity issues are a thing of the past!
Will Tactical Urbanism dominate public spaces?
Tactical Urbanism is a short-term, low-cost, and scalable neighborhood building intervention that catalyzes long-term change. Cities are using tactical urbanism as their core strategy to cope with the pandemic. Artistically wrapped red-white caution tape in London's major public spaces has become ubiquitous.
In North America, from Cincinnati to Long Beach, restaurants utilize adjoining sidewalks and parking spaces to practice physical distance while dining. De Blasio, the Mayor of New York City sees outdoor dining as the way forward, and said, “Outdoor dining, it's a new reality, we've had it before but the way we have to do it now is very new and different and we're ready.” Streets of Brno in the Czech Republic are paving the way to recover gastronomical businesses through the Gastro Safe Zone. This design hack aims to restore at least 37% restaurant, bar, and cafe businesses by retrofitting the existing public realm with space grids and portable furniture.
Open-air farmers markets and grocery stores form a vital component of essential services, needing an easy, cost-friendly, and effective strategy to maintain safe physical distance between buyers and sellers. Hence, the use of materials like caution tape, paint, and chalk has gained popularity at markets and grocery stores worldwide. The usually crowded markets of Asia were among the first ones to quickly embrace new layouts with this strategy. Daw Pyone Kathy Naing, a prominent lawmaker from Myanmar said, “The main aim (of the new market layout) is to avoid disrupting the usual trade flow while allowing local farmers and vendors to sell their produce at a safe distance.”
Tactical Urbanism is believed to be the most democratic design intervention and we’re expecting to see a lot more of it in our post-pandemic cities.
Will we successfully improve access to public spaces for all?
Since access to public and green spaces is associated with numerous health outcomes, lack of access to them is related to lower life expectancy. Health equity studies show that people from vulnerable communities have lower access to yards, neighborhood parks, tree-lined streets, or other public spaces. Children from deprived areas are nine times less likely to have access to green space and places to play. In the U.S. alone, 100 million people, including 28 million children do not have a neighborhood park within a 10-minute walk from home. In England, the most affluent 20% wards have five times the amount of green space compared with the most deprived 10% wards.
Increased usage and dependence on neighborhood spaces during lockdown has strengthened the case for creating a diverse and well-distributed network of public space. Sustainability and health equity advocates have demanded reinvestment in local, smaller, neighborhood parks, and public spaces for decades. And we think Mayor Hidalgo’s 15-minute city (Paris) or Mayor Meehan’s 20-minute neighborhoods (Melbourne) might be the beacons of hope we've all been waiting for!
As cities recover, the public realm is likely to have clearly marked lanes for walking, biking, cars, buses, delivery, and ride-share vehicles. We hope that public transport also bounces back stronger, with more bus-only lanes and less congestion! We expect cities located around water to decongest buses and trains by leveraging water transport.
The pandemic illuminated that cities are not only capable of prioritizing community and environmental health but are also relying on it for sustaining the economy. Looks like the people-centric urbanist visions of city design weren’t so far-fetched after all!
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