The end of the beginning
Welcome to Shutdown Corners, a newsletter about the uncertain future of urbanism
How expensive is failure? I’m starting this newsletter, an exploration of the urban environment and coronavirus, with a question, mostly because we’re too early in the story to have satisfactory answers. Cities constantly evolve. But in the midst of this unprecedented moment, where stark failures to address equity, resiliency, and leadership have been exposed to the core, they seem ripe for remaking.
Simplistically, the story of cities is how financial shocks reshape the physical; redlining, suburbanization, globalization, the Great Recession, these seismic events both erected buildings and ripped down homes. This pandemic, to paraphrase a recent McKinsey study, is a physical shock reshaping the financial: mom-and-pop restaurants and small businesses going under, the housing market gets throttled, and everyone experiences the slow tear in the fabric from six feet apart.
My goal with this newsletter is to explore how the built environment will be changed by this pandemic. It’s a story beyond just architecture, design, and real estate; the politics of rent and worker strikes, the way shutdown and shelter-in-place uproot entire industries, and the existential financial crisis facing public transit are just three ways COVID-19 have exposed the precariousness of urban life in 2020.
I hope you enjoy my attempts to think out loud, talk with and learn from experts, and make sense of the shifts reshaping our homes, our blocks, and our cities.
The tragedy of the commons
But wait, isn’t this email concept a little late? According to Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp, who’s letting all manner of local businesses in his state serve customers, we’re ready to reopen (though many local Georgia leaders have a slightly different take on such orders). Kemp, and like-minded protestors and business leaders across the country, argue that we’re able to safely share commercial space again, as long as we take proper precautions. At the same time, cities globally are clawing back space from cars, reclaiming golf courses for residents, and expanding public spaces with public safety in mind. After weeks, and in some cases months, of being mostly stuck indoors at home, it’s heartening to be given space to roam and socialize from a distance.
But permission isn’t persuasion, and the pulse of cities and commerce can’t be artificially jumpstarted. Take Simon Property Group, the nation’s largest owner of malls, which has created plans to reopen 49 shopping centers, some as soon as this weekend (after the plan became public, the company already postponed some opening dates). Shoppers will be greeted by security guards “actively reminding” them to maintain social distance, regular audio announcements will remind everyone to practice “Healthy Shopper Habits,” and some seating in food courts and sinks in bathrooms will be taped off to keep people apart. Not exactly a relaxing afternoon with friends, or a return to normalcy (not to mention that Gap stores and anchor tenants like Macy’s won’t reopen for many weeks). Simon executives want to start reintroducing shoppers, and get the public accustomed to a new normal. One professor called the attempt to strike a balance between profits and personal safety a “tightrope act.”
It also might be a fool’s errand to revisit the retail of the before times. Amazon and other big players that can weather the storm are poised to seize market share, moribund department store brands are close to or hitting bankruptcy, and small businesses and shopping districts with personality will be battered. As Derek Thompson writes in his excellent take on post-pandemic retail in The Atlantic, with so many stores shuttering and business slow to recover, chains will emerge triumphant and “long stretches of the city will feel facelessly anonymous.” Will the only sound in these re-opened malls be recorded messages about mask etiquette?
Every shared space—from parks and libraries to coffee shops and coworking offices—will need to figure out their own calculus, just as local leaders will need to decide larger policies around the matter. But just look overseas, where other nations that had less severe outbreaks than the U.S. have started reopening, to see just how difficult it is to get anybody to pretend like the last few months didn’t happen. In Germany, which opened last week, empty commercial corridors “felt more like a wake,” with foot traffic in Munich at just 13 percent of pre-shutdown levels. In the Czech Republic, which successfully prevented mass infections, cities like Prague are on detailed, multistep, multi-week reopening plans. In China, hopes that so-called “revenge spending” would fuel a recovery have been dashed by this dystopian portrait of Wuhan in Bloomberg, which found old habits recover slowly. Malls are still barren, people are buying cars to avoid the subways, and in corporate cafeterias, workers sit alone, surrounded by protective placards admonishing them to eat fast and avoid talking.
Opening up and closing down are meaningless terms. The public spaces people crave, that help make cities vital, will be deemed either safe and unsafe by everyone individually. What comes next? Will the techno-surveillance state grow in the service of public health?
New York’s Justin Davidson wrote a great piece about a new tool to fight separation anxiety and return the pulse of social circulation to cities: tape. Placemaking hacks, tactical urbanism, and DIY means of using temporary markers and tape to make space both safe and available will find us all developing “new social dances that resemble the formal ballroom steps of yore.”
May Day
I’ve found few coronavirus-and-city story lines more engaging and consequential than the emergence of rent strikes and an even more robust housing and tenant’s right movement. The affordability crisis has threatened to make housing a huge issue for years. COVID-19 threw gasoline on the fire. Today alone, organized rent strikes are planned for California and New York, as well as protests at Governor Cuomo’s house. When you have just a few hundreds dollars to your name, food and medicine for your family come way before rent. ParentsTogether Action, in a survey of 1,200 families, found that just half of families will be able to pay their rent/mortgage bills on May 1 without cutting back on other basic essentials like food, 54% of those surveyed have lost income or expect to soon, and of those, 60% have yet to receive assistance from the government in the form of unemployment or the emergency stimulus payment.
Reading list
The more things change …
The Pandemic Will Change American Retail Forever (The Atlantic)
What does a pandemic sound like? For many of us at home, it’s a heartbreaking silence. (Washington Post)
Google's real estate pause shows cracks in tech office demand (Business Times)
The more they stay the same…
Memo: California’s Housing Precarity in the Context of the Coronavirus Pandemic (Data for Progress)
Coronavirus Isn’t Stopping Some Wealthy Homeowners From Listing Their Luxury Properties (Wall Street Journal)
“Higher Than We Ever Saw in the 2008 Crisis”: Why the Coming COVID-19 Mortgage Crisis May Be Worse Than the Last One (Vanity Fair)
Thanks for checking out the inaugural issue of Shutdown Corners. Please consider referring to a friend, and if you were sent this, please subscribe yourself. Send any tips, feedback, suggestions, and questions to patsisson@gmail.com.