This is an introductory excerpt from an article commissioned by Inside Story on the impact of the coronavirus on Australian cities. The full article is here. Published 30 March 2020.
Public squares and downtown shopping strips are nearly empty. The roar of traffic is subdued; neighbourhoods are left with birdsong and the sounds of children playing in backyards. Trains, trams and buses once bursting with rush-hour commuters are running close to empty.
Quite suddenly, doing one’s daily work no longer means long and frustrating commutes across sprawling metropolitan regions. Most offices are shut. The bars are shut, the clubs are empty, the city promenades are deserted. Many people find themselves out of a job, their gigs cancelled, their shifts gone, their employee status furloughed.
And so the dynamic rhythms of an urbane, social, inner-city life are suddenly and radically compressed — confined to a walk in the park, perhaps, a cycle around safer streets, a dash to the supermarket for essentials, and quite possibly many more trips to the biscuit cupboard.
This time, we know, will pass, but we don’t know quite when. In the meantime, how we see how our cities will need to change. Mapping and reporting a city’s rhythms over coming months will require a shift in how we think about the role and purpose of our urban spaces.
In recent years, cities have been powerhouses of the global economy. The “triumph of the city” — in Edward Glaeser’s famous turn of phrase — has been evidenced in the greater productivity and innovation that results from proximity and density.
But we now face an uncertain era in which many of the usual indicators — economic output, occupancy rates, congestion, employment — tell a story of sudden decline, precarity and isolation.
Density suddenly looks dangerous. Gathering may breed sickness.
Over the coming months, and perhaps even years, as we look ahead to uncertain recovery periods, the indicators used to judge how well a city is performing will likely stay dire. In the meantime, we can expect to see the emergence of different ways of living in cities together. Perhaps, too, we might even find better ways of valuing these things.
As the urbanist Richard Sennett reflected in his 2015 book Building and Dwelling, “the built environment is one thing; how we dwell in it another.” The urban economy has taken a huge hit: yet here we remain, in densely packed neighbourhoods, dwelling together.
Full story here.
Published 30 March 2020.