How neighborhood land use and equity define #StayHome

A chalkboard sign in an Arlington, VA front yard urges people to stay home. (Photo by me) 

Stay-at-home orders are the mobility misnomer of our day.

Just as rush-hour-only “commuter” transit lines frame inequitable service as acceptable and calling someone a “jaywalker” blames people for unsafe pedestrian environments, #StayHome is a perfect on-paper solution to coronavirus.

But a true stay-at-home order – i.e. literally no one can leave their homes – severs people from their life needs, and around the world chaos have resulted when something even closely resembling one has been announced. For example, Turks dangerously crowded into stores moments after the country curfewed 31 cities this past weekend; Donald Trump’s abrupt cessation of Europe-U.S. travel last month led to comparably unsafe and unsanitary conditions at airports. And mass flight from Wuhan preceding that city’s lockdown helped make the then-regional coronavirus outbreak into a global one.

To avoid these types of problems, U.S. states and cities’ mobility restrictions, though often worded as “stay-at-home” orders, have plentiful exemptions that make them something more along the lines of “stay local, act reasonably, and socially distance” directives.

Constructs such as built environment, wealth, and occupation then influence how the directives play out, shaping how people move and interact.

Accordingly, though COVID-19 doesn’t consciously adhere to zoning codes or telework policies, such societal constructs affect how the virus spreads and who it hits hardest. Though the mechanisms may vary by a given place’s combination of land use and density, the end results we’ve seen tend to be similar and tragic: the essential, but overlooked people society most depends on are ravaged by not just the disease itself, but also the unemployment, hunger, and other devastating consequences it’s brought us.

But is there a built environment that can stave off coronavirus’s health and economic impacts, protecting people from illness, keeping communities logistically and economically functional, and sustaining quality of life? Or is telling everyone to stay home, knowing that’s not actually feasible, really the best we can do? In pondering what might constitute the right mix of separation and connectivity during this time, I’ve found that my own neighborhood just might offer some answers.

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Social mixing is a way of life in high-intensity, vertical cities. This mixing facilitates collaboration that powers our global economy and allows for a fun, fast-paced lifestyle, but it also renders people in dense places particularly vulnerable to coronavirus exposure.

Strong, proactive leadership can control COVID-19 in these places, as seen in cities such as Seoul, Hong Kong, and Singapore that have sustained relative normalcy in the face of the crisis. But the experiences of Wuhan, Madrid, and New York show how explosively the situation can escalate in a dense environment should the aggressive measures needed to suppress an outbreak be absent or belated.

Dense places allow people to live near their life needs, but if too many people are outside at once fulfilling those needs case numbers may rise uncontrolled. This conundrum shaped New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s recent statements about overcrowding of outdoor spaces, in which he incorrectly but perhaps instinctively referred to the crowding as “density.” Viral spread amidst such crowding tears these places apart by attacking the people who shape their character and connectedness, like the 50 New York MTA workers COVID-19 has taken from us.   

Conversely, fear of such overcrowding and out-of-control spread might pressure everyone who can do so to stay inside, even if stay-local orders deem things like outdoor exercise and fresh-air-getting essential activities. For example, on a recent socially-distanced bike ride through Arlington, VA, I observed a desolate Rosslyn-Ballston corridor – one of the densest parts of the U.S.’s national capital region, an emerging coronavirus hotspot. Closed businesses like Clarendon’s delicious Heritage Brewpub and Roastery symbolized the crisis’s toll on the transit-oriented corridor’s economy and well-being.   

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At first glance, it might seem that people who live in low-intensity, horizontal suburbs and exurbs – where much of life happens in spacious homes and yards – can maintain relatively normal routines at minimal risk of contracting or spreading the virus. They can go out on walks with their families and pets, for example, with little reason to be concerned about accidentally stepping within six feet of someone else.

It’s easy for residents of these places to feel self-sufficient and protected in their homes, whether or not they’re told to stay local. Accordingly, it’s also easy for these people to assume that everyone else “shouldn’t be on buses, they should be at home,” as the city manager of Montebello, CA, a Los Angeles suburb, stated when that municipality shut down its transit network as a COVID-19 control measure. 

   

But the single-use zoning underlying those life-defining homes and yards makes hub-and-spoke mobility and supply networks essential to these places’ viability even during normal times. Thus, people working on the front lines can’t just stay at home if these neighborhoods are to persevere, but instead must toil in close proximity at the distant big-box stores and distribution centers that such neighborhoods depend on. If COVID-19 is introduced to such hubs, these essential workers are the first in harm’s way.

Evidence indicates that though the coronavirus may take longer to reach low-density places, it’s just as lethal once there, supporting the possibility of such hub-and-spoke behavior. Northern Italy’s ravaged towns demonstrate the most extreme potential consequences of this, while tragic flare-ups in places like Palm Beach County, FL show that U.S. suburbia is not immune to this danger.  

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If too many people go out during the COVID-19 pandemic, the consequences are obvious. But the cost of too many people staying in is also unacceptably high, and vulnerable populations bear the brunt of it.

This begs the question: is there a neighborhood-level combination of space, density, and land use that could equitably protect everyone from the virus until a vaccine is created? A combination that would help us avoid mass unemployment and stir-craziness while minimizing the risk of coronavirus exposure for essential workers and teleworkers alike?

In theory, such a medium-density, mixed-use neighborhood requires enough people and businesses to support a locally powered economy that takes care of life needs, but also enough space to ensure the customers and workers who power those businesses can do so safely:

• The presence of multiple small grocery stores, markets, and pharmacies keeps individual establishments from becoming overcrowded, protecting the health of and reducing strain on employees while providing residents diverse options. When possible, these stores utilize locally sourced, polycentric supply chains to keep their shelves full, minimizing the need for large-scale distribution hubs that could foster outbreak hotspots.
• People have space to go outside their residences and fulfill needs like groceries, exercise, or travel to essential jobs. This space ensures people on foot don’t have to interact too closely with each other or with automobile drivers.
• While most residents don’t have to leave the neighborhood for their own day-to-day needs, essential, sustainable public transit ensures people who need to get in or out, such as health and service industry workers, can do so safely and efficiently.

My DC neighborhood of Cleveland Park has some of these characteristics, but the community’s conversation surrounding density and growth – long ongoing, but certain to be changed by COVID-19 – demonstrates just how precarious a balance we must navigate to keep people and businesses healthy.

Even before the pandemic, the neighborhood’s businesses were in a fight to keep their doors open. Plenty of residents see influxes of mixed-use density, like that the proposed Macklin project will provide, as a way to expand businesses’ customer base while also giving local consumers more options. But others feel the community must become a regional hub, drawing patrons from other places largely by preserving and expanding car storage, to get an economic jolt.

The need to adhere to stay-local orders boosts the case for density that can make neighborhoods like Cleveland Park economically and logistically self-sufficient, as well as for space-creating conversion of currently car-obligated public spaces into bikeways or pedestrian plazas.

But the multi-unit complexes needed to provide that density may result in unnerving social mixing, and accordingly pushback that could fuel arguments for sprawling, auto-oriented land use contrary to the goals described above.

Now that we’re more attuned to the threat novel viruses pose, new complexes could be designed with features such as in-unit laundry and open, inviting stairs that minimize unnecessary mixing, helping alleviate anti-density concerns. These features, however, not only aren’t always feasible, but could significantly affect neighborhood affordability and accessibility.

Once the long-term outlook for this pandemic becomes clearer, it will be easier to envision how COVID-19 and the mobility limitations it’s necessitated will affect the built environment, space, and connectivity of our neighborhoods. But though the discussion is just beginning, finding the right balance could save lives, jobs, and our sanity.