Nancy’s Cheese is closed/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
This is all very personal for me. One daughter used to manage a coffee shop; her spouse worked in a restaurant. My other daughter was a cheesemonger; her spouse worked in local theatre. None of them have any idea whether they will have jobs to come back to. These were not big operations; it’s not like the signs say Walmart is closed. Nancy’s is closed. Dave’s. Emma’s. Leah’s. Names and faces that we know.
Richard Florida suggests that all these small businesses will need loans from governments, foundations and private industry, but it will take a lot more than that. In fact, we have to rethink and rebuild our main streets on the basis of their strengths in the face of both 2020’s public health crisis and climate change. And those strengths and advantages are significant.
Here Comes the Neighborhood
Dave’s is closed/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Almost everyone who worked in an office is now working from home, and when this is over, a lot of them are not going back. There are a number of reasons for this; as I noted in an earlier post on urban planning,
Managers are not going to want to put all their employee eggs in one basket, and they are not going to want to rent a lot more space to accommodate them all at lower densities. They have also learned that they can supervise and manage even when the employees are not in their face. So it is likely that a significant proportion of the workforce is going to keep working from home.
But office workers often go shopping at lunch, go to the gym before work, hit the cleaners or go out with a co-worker for lunch. People have to get out of the office just to get out of the office, and will likely feel the same about their home office. This could lead to a dramatic increase in customers for local businesses and services in the local neighborhoods. As Eric Reguly noted in The Globe and Mail:
Sharon Woods wrote in Public Square about how Main Streets might evolve to service this new working environment.
Coworking Is Not Dead Yet
Emma’s is closed/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
WeWork will probably not survive, but there are a lot of people working from home who probably really prefer to get out of the house or apartment. However, smaller neighborhood coworking spaces might just fit the bill for people who need a place to go to. They will be less like WeWork and more like what Kim Mok described as “intentional communities”:
A giant WeWork might still make a lot of people uncomfortable, but a local coworking space might be more like that famous TV bar where everyone knows your name. And just like offices downtown, it will drive new traffic to the surrounding stores, services, and restaurants.
Leah’s is closed/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Sharon Woods describes how small businesses can connect to their customers better than the online suppliers.
TreeHugger’s Katherine Martinko recently wrote about how she dealt with shopping in the small town where she lives, finding that the internet and social media made it easier and faster than the usual online services when she had some last-minute Easter and birthday needs.
She came to the conclusion that I hope becomes more common:
Decentralize Everything and Build a 15-Minute City
Garrison Creek health services/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
After my doctor retired, I signed up with a new thing here in Ontario, Canada—a family health team, designed to “to give you the very best primary care, when you need it, as close to home as possible.” It is an extension of the hospital, but has everything I need in my neighborhood. I was very lucky to have it open so close to where I live, but it is a wonderful model for health care delivery. There’s no need for people to have to clog up hospital waiting rooms when you can decentralize so much of what they do.
It also may well have been a prescient move in the current crisis. After witnessing northern Italy’s struggles, a lot of doctors have suggested that their big modern centralized hospitals were a serious problem. Andrew Nikiforuk writes in the Tyee:
clockwise, the headings read: Learn, Work, Share and Re-Use, Get Supplies, Take the Air, Self-Develop and Connect, Look After Yourself, Get Around, Spend, and Eat Well. (Paris en Commun)/Public Domain
Mayor Anne Hidalgo of Paris wants to change the zoning of the city so that everyone can get all the services they need within a fifteen-minute walk. This turns planning as we knew it upside down; instead of separation of functions through zoning, it mixes everything up. Feargus O’Sullivan writes in Citylab about a “commitment to bringing all life’s essentials to each neighborhood means creating a more thoroughly integrated urban fabric, where stores mix with homes, bars mix with health centers, and schools with office buildings.”
Make It Easy and Safe to Walk or Bike
There is still life on the street/ Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0
Timothy Aeppel of Reuters writes how Americans wary of public transport turn to bikes and quotes a recent convert:
He is part of a trend. Bicycle Shop Girl sees it too: “People are turning to biking in a big way during this as it is one of the few family activities that we can do together outside during social isolation. Streets are being shut down to give people more room to bike and walk. People that have NEVER thought about biking have reached out to me with questions, and my inbox is exploding with people wanting help.”
Bikes, and walking, are the perfect way to get around a neighborhood. My 15-minute city gets over twice the diameter if I go from walking to biking. Yet the sidewalks are not wide enough and the bike lanes are nonexistent. Something has to give. After noting on Treehugger that I am actually running on the streetcar tracks, I was interviewed by Lori Ewing of the Canadian Press, complaining about the lack of space.
It’s not just during this crisis, and not just for social distancing. We also have a climate crisis, and have to get people out of cars. The best way to do that is to give people an alternative that is healthy, that is fun, that is affordable and that is convenient. The fact that it is also more resilient and climate-friendly is a nice bonus.
