Dangerous Density: Should Coronavirus Change Our Thinking on City Living?
Article by Phillip Carl Salzman in "PJMedia":
Urban planners and social critics have long urged
that we move to higher density, high rise urban centers, and away from
dispersed, low rise, and especially single-family dwellings in the
suburbs and exurbs. One of the main arguments in favor is that dense
urban centers are more “sustainable,” which reflects urban planners’
dislike of automobiles and roads, regarded as only sources of pollution.
Furthermore, they argue
that “people who live in dense, walkable areas tend to be physically
healthier, happier, and more productive. Local governments pay less in
infrastructure costs to support urbanites than they to support
suburbanites. Per-capita energy consumption is lower in dense areas,
which is good for air pollution and climate change. Plus, dense,
walkable areas tend to be buzzy and culturally vibrant.” But how should
pandemics like coronavirus affect our thinking?
The reality is that many Americans prefer the suburbs to urban centers. According to Pew Research,
“since 2000, suburban counties saw a 16% increase in population,
compared with increases of 13% and 3%, respectively, in urban and rural
counties. The overall share of U.S. residents who live in suburban
counties has also risen during this period while holding steady in urban
counties and declining in rural ones.” Urban planners know that their
preference for dense, high-rise urban centers is not popular.
But they
are not deterred by how their fellow citizens actually want to live
their lives, and they focus on “overcoming resistance” to advancing dense urban centers.
Is
high population density an unalloyed good? Even if highly dense urban
areas are preferred by some people, and may be beneficial in various
ways, e.g. “cultural vibrancy,” what are the costs, the negative
consequences? There may be many, for example, the difficulty and cost of
having children in dense urban areas, and the consequent decline in
population replacement. But an obvious downside during this time of
coronavirus pandemic is the ease of contagion and transmission of the
virus among people in close contact.
States
with heavily rural, low-density populations—the Dakotas, Nebraska,
Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Montana, Nevada, Idaho—have
only small numbers of coronavirus infections,
States with large, dense urban areas—New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, Washington—have been hardest
hit by the pandemic. Above all, it is the urban areas—New
York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Washington, Chicago, New
Orleans, Los Angeles, Seattle—that have suffered the greatest number of
cases and deaths.
Our
main tool for stopping virus contagion is “social distancing,” the
spatial separation of people so that the virus is not passed from one
person to another. This is particularly difficult in dense urban areas.
Living in a high rise means that getting into or out of one’s apartment
means taking a small elevator with other residents. Outside of one’s
dwelling, travel to another part of the city requires public
transportation, busses or subway trains, once again crowded together
with other travelers. Only that greatly denounced “evil,” rare in
central cities, the automobile with one occupant, provides “social
distancing.” Unfortunately, human density “cultural vibrancy” is closely
correlated with “virus vibrancy.”
One
of the reasons that young families like to live in the suburbs is that
it is relatively safe for children. During the coronavirus, it has
become obvious that single-family homes separated from one another also
offer a greater degree of “social distance” and thus greater protection
from virus contagion and infection than do the dense high rises,
tenements, and row houses of dense urban areas. And as do private autos
compared with public transportation.
Perhaps
it is time for urban density and public transport advocates to stop
claiming the moral high ground and to stop demeaning alternative
choices. If they do, there may be one small benefit from the otherwise
horrific and dangerous coronavirus pandemic.
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