Panacea: Coronavirus and Totalizing Urbanism’s Broken Promise
“The future is urban!” Such is the rallying cry of the 21st century urbanist, a call to action and a moral grounding point. Staking their claim on the very idea of the future, the urbanist rally cry calls to mind Nikita Khrushchev’s infamous prophecy, “History is on our side. We will bury you.”
This particular brand of urbanism took its cues from Jane Jacobs’ naïve and often incorrect observations about her own neighborhood and gained maturity and serious intellectual scholarship under the umbrella of the New Urbanism. New Urbanism’s rise from niche to political orthodoxy was seeded by the disinvestment in public infrastructure which began in the Reagan years and only accelerated through the Bush Administration and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. “We built too much,” the New Urbanists could claim, “and now we cannot afford to maintain it all.” Much better to tear down freeways, combined sewers, and other vital infrastructure and replace it with something cheap, like bus rapid transit. After all, it’s the only option that we can afford.
During New Urbanism’s ascent to power, it picked up a moral imperative — a totalizing imperative that, while present since the dawn of the movement, found its voice in the post-2008 era. It was no longer enough to create new urban spaces (indeed, the “New” part of the New Urbanism has been largely dropped — again, a rhetorical claim toward timelessness and destiny), but rather to replace existing, functional land use patterns with urbanism. No bicyclists? Doesn’t matter, install the bike lanes and they will surely come. History is on our side!
The fundamental problem with 21st century urbanist policy is not in the belief that certain groups of people might prefer urbanism, or that urbanism may solve many of the world’s resource problems, but that it is a panacea: literally, a cure-all.
The idea of urbanism-as-panacea is as seductive to its advocates as it is radicalizing: if urbanism truly cures all of modern society’s ills and has no downsides (at least, none to speak of, if you already have an aesthetic affinity for urbanism), then it is the urbanist’s moral duty to export it to the world, even by foisting it on nonbelievers. “I am saving them!” the radicalized urbanist explains. “They simply do not understand yet that their way of life is wrong. If I cannot convince them, then it is my duty to save them without their consent.”
Growing awareness of climate change, and the imperative to act, may well have been the spark which ignited the moralizing component that permeates 21st century urbanism. Anthropogenic climate change has radically altered the planet and potentially jeopardized humanity’s long-term survival; therefore, any actions which can bring about the cure are justified.
Yet, this does not fully explain urbanism as a panacea. The movement also espouses a degree of postmodern anti-humanism, which states that humanity is a plague which must be contained. By unironically adding this component, urbanists can dismiss dissenting opinions as greed, racism, and outdated Modern thinking. “Your time has passed. We will be at your funeral.”
By offering urbanism as a panacea, its advocates immediately dismiss constructive dissent, debate, and reasonable compromise. By definition, a panacea cannot have any reasonable arguments against it; therefore, any criticism of totalizing urbanism must be dismissed as unreasonable.
Like perhaps no other event could, the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the flaws in the totalizing urbanist’s world view. For all its benefits, and those benefits can be manifest, urbanism is not a panacea. Density, especially the automobile-hostile, transit-dependent density which characterizes totalizing urbanism, undoubtedly increases the transmission rate of disease. This is a fact that would have been patently obvious to anyone living in a city in any other era of human history. Higher rates of person-to-person contact, increased reliance on coffee shops, restaurants, and convenience stores, and dependence on public transportation all but guarantee that cities will forever be on the front lines of pandemics, which themselves will become more common as the human population moves from small communities into cities and conurbations.
“But wait!” the urbanists will exclaim. “Not all cities are created equal. While their physical environments may be riskier, there are ways to mitigate the risks. And cities often have the best hospitals.” They will point to San Francisco as a shining example of a dense, re-urbanizing city which took early warnings seriously and shut down public activity sooner than its stricken East Coast brethren. This misses the point: mitigations like social distancing and large-scale shutdowns of public life will necessarily affect cities worst, and will cripple urbanist cities worst of all, with their dependence on shared services, communal third places, and residential cohabitation.
Try as they might, urbanists cannot deny this fact. Against the unassailable reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is finally time to end the one-sided moral discussion on urbanism and admit that there is no one cure-all for society’s ills. There is no panacea. And only after urbanists come to that conclusion and excise their moralizing, totalitarian tendencies can we have a meaningful dialogue on the future of our cities.
