Welfare by Design

Introduction.
— May 05, 2020

I am writing to you, dear reader, from the relative safety, comfort, and security of my home in New York City; currently an unhappy epicenter of the ongoing global Coronavirus pandemic. Just like millions of you, in these last few months, we've faced an upending of our freedom of mobility, access to basic public services, lived with fear and anxiety for the future, mourned unexpected losses, and reveled in joyous moments of social connection across virtual platforms. As I write, there are yet, millions more who continue to carry the mantle of society, through work we have deemed "necessary", for whom the daily toil, dire economic uncertainty, and access to basic protective equipment is as ever-present a concern. A concern though, not outweighed by their need of a basic income to secure even the most fundamental of minimum human necessities — health, and shelter. At present, no commission, no state, no local or regional authority is coming to save you. As we have seen in New York, in Italy, and in Wuhan, where infected people so overwhelmed the public healthcare infrastructures that newly infected patients were encouraged to stay home and "ride-out" the virus in insalubrious solitude; the virus has so diminished the capacity of our institutions to meet these demands on their services that it has pushed local, civic, and nation states to the brink of exhaustion in wrangling this virus. The near future will be defined assuredly by economic downturn, multi-scalar global political fracturing, and radical societal change as a response to this time of great uncertainty we currently find ourselves in. What we have left then as individuals dependent on one another, is not hope, nor is it fear, but instead a realization that it will require each of us, individually and collectively, in the coming decades to commit ourselves on the basis of our shared humanity to providing proposals, solutions, and programs across every aspect of our societies which will secure the basic aspects of human life which make a life worth living; the right to adequate healthcare, a right to affordable housing, and the right for an equitable playing field. 

Around us we see the fabric of a society which has been unraveled to its most threadbare state. What we as individuals, and practitioners of spatial practice choose to do with our remaining human and economic capital at this moment will have a profound impact towards securing a future which rises to meet, and nullify the advent of the next global onslaught. That is, if we are deliberately strategic — focusing our disciplinary talents as urbanists, architects, and designers, towards solutions which utilize evidence-oriented, and data-driven design to solve our collective way through this crisis. Securing a future in which we might one day return to a world of global mobility will depend heavily upon our own individual actions as designers, architects, and urbanists, and citizens. It will Require our humility, and our willingness to cooperate beyond our self-imposed boundaries we seem so fond of; be they societal or disciplinary. We must ask ourselves in this new results oriented era,

“what can virologists teach designers about material selections? What can the technology behind London's touch-less underground transit infrastructure teach landlords and operators of commercial real estate about healthy workspaces? How will access to natural light, ventilation, and increased access to open space be written into the guidelines and mandates surrounding housing; new and old, public AND private?”

Should we continue to ignore the interconnectedness of all things; ecology, economics, reform, and regulation — these fundamental disciplinary elements we use as practitioners to construct our physical society, and instead fall back on passé models of disciplinary devotion based purely upon our incorporations — then we will construct out of this crisis merely a thin veneer of false and insufficient protection over our world which, beneath the surface, will still be much like the Neo-liberal one of the past 40 years — One which has thrown us into this tenuous position we presently find ourselves. Deregulated affordable housing, Hospitals driven to focus on profits rather than preparedness; a world which operates best for those with the financial means and technological wherewithal to compete in a race which will only further exacerbate human, economic, political, and ecological degradation. Instead, we must commit to refocusing our disciplinary gaze, not on “trendy” predilections, fetishistic obsession with aesthetics, the temptation to naively "blue" or "green-wash" a project — instead we must use our efforts as opportunities for real and sustaining deep change. With data and results informing our designs, we will work with clients, institutions, and governments to direct health and equity oriented decision making processes; documenting, tracking, reporting, and ultimately sharing our findings with a global public. It will require a commitment to transparency, an abandonment of firm-to-firm secrecy, and a willingness and participatory dedication to a process of advancement and innovation in our spatial practices and sectors that will have no definitive end, but only “continuous improvement” as its humbling aim. 

However, in the present we have already seen emerging disciplinary trends arise from the pandemic — and in future I have no doubt there will invariably be new "awards"; new "merit" plaques prominently hung on the walls of offices and building facades proclaiming “here is a healthy space!” A new kind of caste-based classification system for public and private spaces which will underline and parse out publicly those spaces which are "healthy" from those which are — well, “not well.” These new spatial classifications, if left as the only spatial response, will further divide us as individuals into castes ourselves; as we have already seen class distinctions further outlined by the “can work from home”, and the “can not”s. Frankly, It is the usual and expected simplistic, low effort, low cost, "rebranding" response by owners, employers, and institutional operators; a way to maintain their figurative facades of value in these brick and mortar holdings. To be fair, these first initial steps will actually serve some good in helping to bolster confidence in an ability for life to return to some semblance of normality. We must, however, not lose focus on the deeper and longer term solutions which will carry us much longer and much farther as a society into the future; fathoms farther than any of these short term changes might seeming hope to affect. Effecting real change, these simple initial measures cannot secure a steady future for the longterm — to instill and imbue within our physical spaces, more healthy, sustaining, and accessible public and private spaces, regardless of class or economic distinctions. In order to secure this long-lasting change, we must consider the ways in which access to these newly healthy spaces is open to all. Who has a right to this newly minted city in the making? Is it open to just white collar office workers, those who can pay for the increased rents on capital’s newly renovated "healthy apartments"? How can our public and private infrastructures in the form of sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and public parks provide safety, recreation, and rise to meet the demands for better access by reinvesting in older, less expensive, and more flexibly adaptable modes of human-centric transit — giving more space to bicyclists and pedestrians? How will the existing built fabric at our city’s impoverished peripheries be somehow made less dense, therefore healthier, but also with universal access to essential city services; without displacement of its current residents by a new form of capital-driven autocracy using the guise of "public health" as its mandate? A claim which led to many well meaning yet poorly executed or cared for public housing projects; the products of a god-like tabula-rasa coda of urban planning principles which eradicated many vibrant and tightly knit neighborhoods in the 20th century under the reform-minded propaganda of "slum-clearances”.

I was struck in reflecting upon on the initial aims of the Copenhagen Architecture Festival, whose focus had initially been on the gradual transition of Denmark's welfare cities from being places initially built as cradles for societal equality, to contemporary criticism and contention over their role as places of property-based privilege; limiting access and affordability to the city. Given our contemporary crisis, we require a new re-imagining of the welfare city for our era. In ‘Critical City’ (2019), a collection of essays on the contemporary strains facing the Danish welface cities of Copenhagen, and Aarhus, Editor Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss among others describe utopian cities, “world famous for their pristine harbours with water clean enough for bathing, their unique bike culture and their focus on generous public spaces and buildings” (Critical City, 2019). Planned initially as a civic response to provide affordable, safe, adequate, standardized housing in the post-war era, the danish 'Almen Bolig' ( trans: social housing ), held high-minded objectives for societal reform through urban design and redevelopment. Similar to its Danish contemporaries, here in New York, as soldiers returned from war and began what would later be called the "baby-boom" by American historians, their return and rapidly expanding families placed increased density pressures on an already strained housing stock. Housing shortages, a lack of inventory, along with insufficient or inadequate space to raise families in the city led many civic and state entities, along with private developers to re-make the city through ambitious planned communities. 

In the years that followed, where Denmark has been much slower to privatize or even neglect what had once been its urban commitments to affordability and access to the city as a civic right to its citizens, New York's near wholesale forfeiture of these once grand societal claims is striking, and embarrassing by comparison. America's seemingly uncomfortable relationship with any form of civic provisions, be they investments in public infrastructure, social housing, or access to healthcare as a right rather than an expensive privilege, boldly stares down the barrel of American "rugged individualism", which has come to define the 'Columbian' ethos. To speak again as an advocate for "top-down planning", or even a "return of the welfare state" is a contentious and delicate subject to broach even in the most well-meaning of circles; but there must be recognition that past generations at home and abroad once met great societal crises head on with proactive, sweeping, and long lasting effect. If we can learn from the past mistakes these urban planning policies made, chiefly the wholesale clearances of once vibrant neighborhoods in the name of societal reform, and later, the privatization and commercialization of these last refuges of affordability in cities overrun by a totalizing neoliberalized economy of survivalism, then we can set forth a new course for public and private development which will rise to meet today's most pressing urban issues. Similarly, in responding to our contemporary global health pandemic by re-making our cities, homes, and workplaces, how do our efforts ultimately sync-up with existing and ambitious plans for cutting co2 emissions? Copenhagen had previously pledged to be carbon neutral by 2025, Denmark by 2050. America is clearly lagging well behind the Danes when we realize New York City’s aim is to match carbon neutrality by 2050 respectively; moving as it would appear at the pace of a small Nordic nation; undermining the legitimacy of claims New York so oft makes of itself as a ‘world leader’. Denmark then, is clearly a capital example for urban reform, and New York, along with the rest of America could have a lot to learn from our Nordic friends abroad.

While the virus bears no territorial empathy or prejudice for the urban vs the rural (based upon present statistics), it's clear that some of the hardest hit areas continue to be urban areas where increased density and mobility have made these cities epicenters for our current crisis. As cities and governing districts move to ease lock-downs and stay-at-home orders, employers, universities, and institutions have similarly been at work creating interim plans to "de-densify" our public places, floor-plates, and encourage an alternating workforce in which 1/2 of the population will remain working from home. But what of the more inflexible public infrastructures such as sidewalks and mass-transportation, where the literal concrete and steel-clad limitations of immediate expansion to these networks are either too costly, or impractical? Once these mandates for self-isolation are lifted, safe mobility will become dependent upon maintaining proper social distance, becoming a chief concern for citizens, health authorities, and governments. Already in New York, we have seen a glacially paced response on the part of mayor Bill De Blasio to close streets with significantly diminished car traffic, opening them instead to pedestrians and cyclists; a plan which would better accommodate the self-imposed social distancing measures his very own office, and health authorities have mandated. If half the population of our cities are to return to the workforce in some way, providing alternative pathways in the form of new and increased capacity sidewalks, and bicycle lanes will not only help alleviate overcrowding in poorly ventilated and confined mass-transit stations and subway cars, but also help cities achieve their targeted co2 emissions; improving air quality to healthy levels, ultimately reducing the risk of airborne and respiratory diseases currently putting pressure on our civic environments. Renewed dedication to protected bicycling infrastructure, as well as providing for a more expansive pedestrian realm will be essential to protecting public health, wellness, and safety beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, and should be considered essential infrastructural investments necessary to making more livable and accessible cities. 

As practitioners of the urban and spatial realm, even given our lengthy educations, our rigorous examinations, and the ethical mandates we seem to hold ourselves to; despite all of this I'm often amazed at how quickly we seem to forget our shared human history for overcoming seemingly insurmountable societal change through ambitious plans, unrelenting resolve, and a willingness to see these projects through to their ends. Using New York City as a case study of urban planning aims and outcomes, we must remember that it was the 1811 commissioner's plan which laid out in imaginary lines, an orthogonal city set forth on the flimsiest of parchment which would come to prescribe the eventual layout and unrelenting grid of streets and avenues. Over time, and with much consternation by private landowners, speculative developers, builders, architects, and engineers infilled with brick and mortar these once imaginary lines. A little over 100 years later, by 1916, this soaring, chaotic, and haphazard jockeying of skyscrapers which typified the city's skyline would be wrangled into coherence through an ambitious zoning resolution. A set of urban planning and building principles which codified into a series of rules and dictates mandating setbacks; the intent of which guaranteed the right of every New Yorker to have access to sunlight, and fresh air — from pedestrian, to apartment dweller, to office worker. These mandates provided the crucible-like framework, an organizational methodology meant to arrange the city in a more deliberate and a more meaningful way, than had its development been left to the gamblings of the private sector to carve up its fiefdoms of real estate. As frameworks, they were ambitious, thoughtful, ethically virtuosic, yes, flawed, and even sometimes Machiavellian in their aims, but in many ways they did more good than harm, and set new standards for coherence to the city; shaping the structure and ensuring prolonged vitality to our densest of urban areas. It's been a little over another 100 years since that time, and we find ourselves as architects, designers, urban planners, and citizens once again at a critical moment of action. Do we wait for private industry and capital to weave its own resources through a tattered and threadbare society in order to get back to economic production? Or do we rely on our own innate human and intellectual capital, as individuals and collectively as practitioners of the urban realm, to set forth new frameworks for global health and density; one that is rigid in its mandate, yet porous enough to remain flexible and adaptable enough to carry us through to the next 100 years? A framework of ambitious goals mandating reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, renewed public accessibility encouraging social and physical mobility. One that is bold enough to set research and data-driven standards for the design and construction industries. One which prioritizes clean air and ventilation in our homes and workplaces both new and old. New York’s 100 year cycle of planning reforms - from 1811, to 1916, to the pressing needs of our current city, the time to re-examine our constructed mandates has never been more pressing than now! For our Danish counterparts, whose record and anthropological / urban research continually outpace the U.S., found that in recent demographic surveys, Denmark revealed at least 37 differing recognized family types — each with differing urban, spatial, and social typology requirements asked of their limited civic space. In the 21st century, if we are to properly, and adequately prepare our cities for coming generations, we will need a framework that secures the right to necessary open space — both private and public, and above all herald the invention of new types of retail, commercial, residential, and other civic-spatial typologies which will come to reflect and adapt to the growing multiplicity of human needs, identities, and self-classifications. I mean how else are we going to house those 37 different types of families?

Submission to / 2020 Copenhagen Architecture Festival

Prompt / Observations, Visions, and Considerations on the Impact of the Corona-Crisis on the Built Environment,
in Both Danish and International Contexts

Published / Submission Rejected

#Covid-19 #Coronavirus #AlmenBolig #SocialHousing #Architecture #UrbanPlanning #Design #Agency

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