First, Stop Blaming Cities
Acknowledge Our Anti-Urban Culture
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2019, I assumed community leaders would immediately blame cities for the problem. Why not? Cities always make good scapegoats. Instead, commentators began by blaming density. How convenient! Once they blamed density it was easy to take their second shot at the true villain – the densest of all places, the paragon of disasters, known as the City. Blaming cities is an intellectual tradition in the United States.
While the “post mortem” of the pandemic reveals many tragedies, it might also reveal some unanticipated positive results. For example, during the pandemic we learned we could work from home effectively. Many employees (and some businesses) now love “work-from-home”. Do employees today recall the horrors of the pandemic as a primary impetus for “work from home?”
The boost in technologies during the pandemic also taught us we can do lots of things from a distance: ordering groceries; buying our morning coffee; tele-visiting a physician; attending family events. For example, I attended a long-distance family funeral, unrelated to the pandemic, which I would have missed without new technology. We discovered that we could undertake the same activities separated by a few miles or a few continents. Without the pandemic would these new opportunities have occurred? Maybe, but perhaps not as quickly or pervasively.
As of this writing, many observers still bemoan the loss of revenue from under-occupied offices. From a planner’s perspective, however, there is no need for economic nostalgia or pessimism. The harms of vacated offices also create helpful opportunities for new uses and businesses. The fact that we no longer need a lot of physical proximity for many activities does not imply a loss in the value of cities. Instead, opportunities will arise where newly found proximity is now feasible. New opportunities, like new growth after a forest fire, come from the inherent strength and value of the underlying community ecology. Perhaps we should celebrate cities more, blame them less, let creativity nourish their futures, and avoid making bad cities.
Three common ways we’ve blamed cities:
War: “Oh, Jerusalem.” Rather, the inhabitants of the city and their different religious systems perpetuated centuries of war.
Racism: “Boston was out of control.” Amidst desegregation, racism in the people inspired wall murals depicting injustice.
Early Zoning: “Milwaukee lacks mixed use.” People developed the policies that upheld the disparate land uses leading to urban incoherence in all American communities.
(author’s photos, 1976, 1968, 1973).
Soon after the pandemic began, many people realized that a variety of social behaviors helped spread the disease. Potentially threatening social behaviors, however, were also behaviors people enjoyed in public places and cities (regardless of local density). In fact, many people wanted to socialize so much that political fights broke out over recommendations for constraining social interactions. Perhaps some people like “density” but don’t like to admit it.
Change The Story
As the pandemic response evolved, the economics of real estate showed new threats. Public opinion moved from blaming cities as the cause to berating cities once again for leading to inevitable “urban” failures – the doom of downtowns, the end of the office, the final death of main streets. Did that happen? Maybe in a few places, but in many other places not so much. However, media reports loved the chaos. The old refrain about news — “if it bleeds, it leads” — became “if it shuts down, blame downtown.” There is no story if downtown survives or thrives — only if it dies. Even worse, the personal tragedies for over a million people (and their families and friends) became a subconscious image for the future of urban communities.
When a disaster ends, new life begins. For anyone following the news during the pandemic, diverse emotions and attitudes dominated civic dialogue. Perhaps when cities grieve in a disaster’s aftermath, they go through community-wide stages of grief a bit like people: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and many other shared emotions. As planners, however, our job is not to demean or berate cities – that would be like “blaming the victim” in an assault, or blaming the trees for the fire. Our job is to change the story. Replace the name of the cities with the name of the source: us. We’re all reliant upon cities, and hold the tools to change communities for the better.
Some people, like myself and perhaps other city planners, love cities. Others, however, dislike cities because of the anxieties and even fears that can be evoked in such places. The city in these photographs — Camden, New Jersey in 1968 — seems to me a charming, wonderful place that has been attacked and damaged. It is the city Walt Whitman chose to inhabit during his waning years. It is not a place to be disliked or hated, but a place that deserves to be supported. Many other cities share the same misfortune in that they are disliked because of ways in which they have been harmed — this attitude is bit like “blaming the victim”. More than half a century has passed since these photos were taken, and Camden still needs support, not condemnation. Changing policies about cities and their constituent neighborhoods continues to be a major challenge for city planners and urban designers.
Topic Summary
Acknowledge Our Anti-Urban Culture
Change The Story