The Lasting Normal for the Post-Pandemic City

(The following is the second of a three-part essay on the overlapping crises that are reshaping America’s cities. This installment separates out fleeting changes that we will see over the coming months from more permanent changes in the form and feel of our cities. Click here to read part one.)

Two images of the post-pandemic city have emerged. One is the urbanist’s utopia of widened sidewalks, ample bike lanes, parking lots converted to green spaces and extended networks of pedestrianized boulevards. The other is a dystopia of empty streets and boarded-up shops, a barren cultural landscape in which the diversity, energy, and pageantry of Barcelona’s La Rambla, Paris’s Champs Elysees, London’s Piccadilly Circus, and New York’s Times Square have been replaced by a tableau of socially-distanced and masked citizens, scurrying quickly between their jobs and their homes. This is a city where theaters and museums are shuttered, where restaurants and cafes are closed down or sparsely populated with socially distanced diners, where there are no people milling on the streets, no children playing in playgrounds, no pickup basketball or soccer games. This is Boston without the Red Sox, Celtics, Patriots, Bruins, or its eponymous Marathon.