Is The Coronavirus Crisis a Communities Reinvestment Opportunity?
2020 has started in nightmarish biblical proportions with a pandemic that, according to a patchwork of data, is having a disproportionate impact on communities. The response by governments has been shutting down the infrastructure facilities or services that many users rely on to carry out economically sustained lives. The damage that will have been done by the shutdown measures – to trust, to businesses, to civil liberties, to individual lives and, of course, to the global economy has thrown civilization to its more challenging crisis.
Our species has followed no global strategy, universal plan, and grandiose architecture. The evolution of the various cities and communities during the early stages of development need not have been all that difficult. It follows a step-by-step and cerebral process for survival; it is a day-by-day -hard working process, leading to adaptation and transformation with no closing or conclusive statement.
The Coronavirus pandemic is an enemy living among ourselves. This is a war we will win, not by building tanks and fighting abroad, but investing in communities. The pandemic’s origins and its hopeful eradication are likely an urban one. Once more a crisis offers us a unique once_in_a_lifetime opportunity to re-imagine our communities and turn them into a more healthy, resilient, equitable, fulfilling and seamless experience.
Cities at the center of our civilization
As I wrote in ‘Embryonic’ Development; Understanding the Evolution of Cities, the word civilization comes from civilitas the Latin word for civilis ‘relating to citizens’. ‘Civilization, as we now call it, occurred only after early humans began to live in cities. Cities were far more competitive, experimental environments than anything that had gone before. The city is the cradle of culture, the birthplace of nearly all our most cherished ideas.’ Civilization could only happen in cities. Cities were then, and they are still, the appropriate environment for the formation of social and economic capital from both private and public [local amenities and assets] investment.
Our way of life is based on physical interaction. We are collaborative and social creatures. Humans do share a sharp individual instinct of survival and a genuine communal sense of responsibility; caring for each other. Humans have been doing exactly that for the last five million years. Instinct has been the local rule. With half of the world's population living in cities, this is where we find the most opportunities to create ideas, grow, exchange knowledge and celebrate unique cultures.
Historically, ancient cities have also been the epicenters of unhealthy outbreaks and pandemics. The response then, as with the Cholera outbreak, was more public health and social investment. Today's world is more complicated and complex. However, many still believe, as it was believed then, that density -the proximity of so many people to one another, and transportation -enabling a greater movement of people and things are bad for our health.
It is believed the COVID-19 virus started at a city wet market (i.e. a market selling animal products and fresh produce vis-a-vis a ‘dry’ market selling cloth, equipment, etc.) in Wuhan, a thriving metropolis in China. The pandemic spread in a local-global-local transportation pattern through local interactions between cities and towns via local transportation networks, and then globally, via international air travel and finally turning local where it disseminated; having a disproportionate impact in poor, segregated and vulnerable communities. The issues aren’t density or mobility, and the solutions are not economic shutdown or stay-at-home restrictions.
The problem with the federal government is that it follows a problem-solving model created in WWII. The federal government has not evolved, is based on specialty and is fragmented into numerous agencies. While not intentionally, the inclination during this crisis has been to shut down the economy. By their very incoherence, government actions increase the likelihood that this solution will fail and prove unsustainable and expensive.
Meanwhile, cities and communities have proven more resilient and prompt to recover. There's no ‘showman’, or ‘choreographer’, no central planning; no global rescue plan, no bureaucracy, no final structure. All there is is just by-products of rules obeyed locally, not globally. These local rules are reviewed over and over again. And this is how development works. Communities have this ability to ‘manufacture’ or ‘programming’ these self-assembly solutions that resemble how cells reproduce to heal the body.
Furthermore, the idea of self-assembly highlights the fundamental importance of bottom-up local rules as opposed to top-down federal rules. In the end, the whole picture emerges as a consequence of hundreds of small local interactions. After more than two thousand years of evolution, the “whole” may be baffling and mysterious in practice, but there is no mystery in the evolutionary history of cities and communities. The real solution to COVID-19 will come from the community response to the crisis, determining containment and hopefully eradication in a city.
Communities at the heart of the economy
Evidence is starting to show that the pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on communities of color, several of which are reporting infection rates that outpace their population. The infection can be particularly dangerous in neighborhoods with lower incomes and large populations of immigrants and people of color. Disinvestment has devastated entire city neighborhoods and is the reason behind many long-time owners trapped in negative equity and communities ill-prepared for crises like this one. We have perhaps been a bit too biased toward global cities instead of looking at thriving and healthy communities.
In low-income communities, high rents have forced many families to double and triple up in cramped quarters, making it hard for those who are sick to quarantine and not infect other family members. Black, Latino, and immigrants often work in essential jobs in grocery stores, delivering food, and operating public transit, leaving them more exposed to the virus. Many lost their jobs and with it, health care insurance. Lack of information has prevented more effective efforts to combat the virus, ”particularly in communities that have had a complicated relationship with health care providers or have significant language barriers.”
Most significantly, these communities lack the essential structural institutions and services needed for healthy community life -diverse restaurants, rich cultural institutions, opportunities and thriving businesses, health and security services, affordable housing, environments where people can walk and exercise, playgrounds and children. Before COVID-19 health conditions were precarious and made life difficult. Today because of confinement and limited movement people are facing significant barriers to access testing and medical treatment. This is resulting in a spike in infections, illness, and death in the most vulnerable communities. The pandemic has exacerbated the entrenched racial divides around investment, economic opportunities and health care access.
This is a war we will win investing in 'healthy' and strong communities -decentralizing structural institutions and services, building housing, ‘sanitized’ public spaces, and infrastructure. The investment will sustain small businesses, keep cash flowing and the supply chain moving. Investment should regain purpose and standards.
Conclusion
War requires investment and sacrifices. The same way we don’t send soldiers ill-equipped to battle the enemy, we can't expect doctors and nurses to respond to the pandemic without protective gear and adequate medical equipment. And while nurses and doctors will fight the virus at hospitals, the real battle for prevention and containment will be fought in our communities.
History tells us how prosperous and healthy communities have proven more resilient and prepared to avert war, siege, disease, and defeat. Prosperity requires investment. Resources to build, operate and maintain community assets and opportunities, as well as providing regular services like policing, schooling, lightning, water garbage collection, and most important disinfecting sidewalks, public spaces and facilities, and public transportation.
Since the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession exposed a situation in which repetition has replaced innovation; sclerosis affects both the public and private sector; intellectual life goes in a circle; and the American project of the pursuit of happiness, underdeliver compared to what people have planned for and expected. Maybe COVID-19 and this stage where we have accepted futility and the absurd as normal could give way instead to a ”recovery of growth and creativity and purpose.” Optimism is the right antidote for this long term crisis.
The great economic challenge and rescue effort of our time is about healing communities and rebuilding the social fabric of America’s neighborhoods. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to set from scratch the enabling features, governance structures, and financing mechanisms to use public and private assets to drive large-scale urban regeneration, particularly around segregated and usually poor neighborhoods. As William Galston of the Brookings Institute has pointed out, “the modern, knowledge-based economy thrives on the density [health] and diversity found in large cities.”