Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 768

One of the debates that is happening in cities all around the world right now is about whether or not it makes sense to redistribute public space in order to help with current social distancing measures. We are all being told to stay at home as much as possible, but as we venture out for food and/or sanity walks, many have started noticing that a lot of our sidewalks are in fact too small if you're trying to stay 2m away from other humans. So with vehicular traffic way down, the question becomes: Should we start borrowing some of that space for pedestrians?

Here in Toronto the official position is no . Closing down streets and lanes to car traffic is usually referred to as creating an "open street." And the intent of these open streets is typically to bring people together for public life, which, of course, is the exact opposite of what we're trying to do right now. What this implies, however, is that there's a belief that additional space for pedestrians would induce demand, similar to what is believed to happen when you add additional lanes on a highway.

Lewis Mumford probably had it best when he allegedly said, " Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity ." So on the one hand, if you believe that more lanes doesn't solve traffic congestion, you might also be inclined to believe that more and bigger sidewalks isn't going to dampen the anxiety we currently feel when other humans get anywhere near us. The additional space would simply get filled with more bodies.

But maybe you could argue that this is a little bit of a different situation. We're in a global pandemic for God's sake and most of us have the better sense to stay home unless it's absolutely necessary. Perhaps in this case, demand would not increase and the greater supply would simply better serve the demand that is already there. Perhaps. I don't have a strong stance on this, but I'm fairly certain that technology could help with this decision.

What do you think?

Photo by  Jason Blackeye  on  Unsplash

Italian architect Gio Ponti is one of the most important architects and designers of the 20 century. An early adopter of modernism, he is credited with helping to renew Italian design after the Second World War through his design work, his writing, and his teaching.

As many of us dream of one day traveling again (I am currently devising an elaborate list of adventures), I thought I would share one of his projects -- the Parco de Principi Hotel in Sorrento, Italy.

When it was completed in 1962, it represented a new kind of architecture for the town. Sorrento was ancient. The Parco de Principi was not. Ornament had been removed and its rooms consisted of largely two colors: white and blue.

Here is a photo by Rich Stapleton :

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7Ilf7ch3lh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

In some ways this feels like a dreadfully obvious approach. Let's celebrate and frame views of the Bay of Naples, and introduce the color blue while doing that. But the results are clearly anything but dreadful.

Ponti was more than just an architect, he was more broadly a designer. His furniture and industrial designs are also widely celebrated. And this attention to detail at multiple scales can make all the difference in the world.

For more photos of Parco dei Principi, click here .

There's a lot of speculation (that's all you can really do) about what our world is going to look like on the other side of this pandemic.

I think it's easy to overreach at a time like this and prognosticate dramatic change -- such as the demise of cities and urbanity as we know it. But while I do believe that there are bound to be changes, I also know that after 9/11 most of us eventually stopped being afraid of flying and of being in tall buildings. We forgot and moved on.

So, what might change?

Scott Galloway argued on his blog today that "things won't change as much as they will accelerate." In other words, this pandemic is simply going to make the future happen faster. And one of those things is going to be a faster shift to online for higher education. It is untenable for education costs to continue increasing at the pace that they have been.

In this recent Intelligencer interview with Chamath Palihapitiya, he puts forward the idea that medical data might start to be used publicly. Meaning that, after this is all done, we might be willing to give up a certain amount of our personal freedom in exchange for knowing whether we're in a restaurant with someone who is shedding a communicable disease.

And finally, Richard Florida recently published this online talk about how cities can bounce back from COVID-19. In it, he argues that, yes, cities will survive and that it could actually reinforce the "winner-take-all urbanism" that we have already been seeing.

This, of course, is really just the start of the conversation.