10 Tasks for Cities Responding to the Pandemic
It seems unlikely that we are going to return to pre-coronavirus America anytime soon. This global pandemic feels like a switch that has released long-standing tensions within our society, revealing deep dysfunction and fragility in the critical systems we depend on.
Whether it’s food supply, housing, health care, transportation, or just basic community commerce, local communities are waking up to just how fragile we are.
Community leaders are going to have to address these problems in real time, under stress, with limited outside assistance. And with financial resources stretched, they won’t have the option to simply throw money at these problems.
To prepare the ground for recovery, we are now forced to innovate. We must find ways to do much more with what is likely to be much less. That’s what local leadership now requires.
Last week we published Nine Things Local Government Needs to Do Right Now in Response to the Pandemic, a guide for the first sixty days. Following that initial phase, local leaders must continue the mental shift they started by recognizing that:
Recovery will not mean restoration. You are leading your community through a transition to something new. Mentally focus on the positives of what lies ahead, not on trying to reclaim what is perceived to have been lost. It is okay to acknowledge the pain of this transition, but your community’s energy and vision must be directed towards a positive future.
You must work towards community self-sufficiency, fully knowing you won’t get all the way there. Nearly every community could produce the food needed to feed themselves, but none do. This acceptance of dependency crosses nearly every domain of essential need. There are many jobs to be created by recognizing that self-sufficiency is a community value of greater urgency than mere economic efficiency. We won’t get all the way there, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important to work towards it.
There is a tradeoff between growth and stability. The pre-coronavirus answer to economic stress at the local level was economic growth, even when that growth made the community fragile. You must now respond to economic stress by emphasizing community stability, even if that means foregoing opportunities for growth. Without stability, you will be thwarted in your response to every other challenge you face.
Preparing for Recovery
With the community stabilized, it’s now time to shift to preparing for a recovery. Here is a list of ten things to work on once you're ready:
Waive Home Occupation Restrictions. With shelter-in-place orders, suddenly all neighborhoods are mixed-use, with commercial activity happening even in places zoned exclusively residential. Allow this obvious fact to be a catalyst for legalizing the recovery.
Legalize Neighborhood Essential Services. In a pandemic, obtaining daily essentials shouldn’t require everyone to travel to the same big box store. Along with legalizing home occupations, allowing neighborhood-scale commercial activities -- things like small grocery stores, pharmacies, hair salons, and other quintessentially neighborhood-focused businesses -- to open in residential neighborhoods creates room for innovators to respond to the crisis.
Kickstart Entrepreneurs. Many commercial buildings are going to be stuck in a type of financialized purgatory, one where they can’t fill vacant space at current lease rates but they also can’t lower the rent due to financing agreements. Particularly in strategic locations (ones that fill streetscape gaps and connect places), use pop-up commercial spaces to seed the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Legalize Housing Adaptations. Your community is going to have people searching for affordable housing. Your community is also going to have people needing more income to avoid foreclosure and stay in their home. Match these two quickly by legalizing accessory dwelling units and duplex conversions.
Make Quick and Lean Investments in Walking and Biking. The quickest way to free up private capital within the community is to make it possible for individuals and families to not have to own and operate a motor vehicle. A family that can shift from two vehicles to one saves thousands each year, money they can redirect to more urgent needs. Have city staff utilize the Strong Towns 4-Step Approach to Making Capital Investments to identify and address the most urgent barriers to walking and biking.
End Parking Requirements. Don’t burden the recovery with requiring any additional parking. With an approach based on building strong neighborhoods, more parking is not only unnecessary, it’s an impediment to future success.
Start Growing Food. People are already responding to potential food shortages by starting to grow their own food. At a minimum, stay out of their way by removing restrictions on gardening, greenhouses, chickens, and other small-scale food production activities. Be proactive by allocating unused public land for community farming. Empower volunteers in the community to organize and lead these activities.
Thicken Civic Infrastructure. Private-Public Partnerships should not be reserved for only commercial transactions. There are many amazing non-profit organizations -- some secular and some religious -- serving the needs of people within the community. Allow them to lead in the areas where they are experts. Use city resources to coordinate, connect, and promote these efforts.
Begin Reorienting Bureaucracies. Most cities have a large number of staff whose job is oriented around pursuing or facilitating growth projects. This personnel should be redirected to working on the Strong Towns 4-Step Approach to Making Capital Investments. Start creating a culture that rewards acts of service/support to groups or individuals within a neighborhood and away from rewards for simply completing transactions or even for finding outside sources of capital for new projects.
Change How You Measure Success. We measure what we value and we improve what we measure. As an indicator of progress, most cities track and publicly report on transactions, such as the number of permits issued. Transactions are not well correlated to successful outcomes. Create a community dashboard to publicly track and report on your desired outcomes. Use it as a North Star to guide and interpret collective action. (The Studer Community Institute has developed a model you can customize. It’s online at www.studeri.org/community-dashboard.)
State and Federal “Assistance”
It is likely that local governments will be offered some form of recovery assistance from the state and/or federal governments. In advance of these funds being offered, be proactive in having a discussion about how to respond.
In 2009, most local government recovery aid came in the form of infrastructure money targeting “shovel ready” projects. While some of these projects were beneficial, many of them were projects that had been put on the shelf for good reasons. They were not high priority investments. Few of these projects responded to the immediate urgency experienced within the community.
Infrastructure spending is popular for state and federal officials because it creates immediate jobs and the potential for long-term growth. For local governments, new infrastructure has some of those same benefits, but also the additional long-term liability of now having to service and maintain that infrastructure. Over time, these hasty transactions rarely work out well for local communities, most of which are already burdened by years of deferred maintenance.
If you are asked or have a chance to influence deliberations, tell your state and federal officials that cities would benefit more from cash assistance than aid channeled through a narrow infrastructure funnel. Local government officials are more influential than they may think, so know that your recommendation could be impactful.
If the only form of assistance provided to local government ends up being an infrastructure appropriation, take steps to focus those funds. You want to select projects with the most upside benefit and the least additional long-term commitment. When considering projects:
Prioritize maintenance over new capacity. With such a massive backlog of basic maintenance needs, it's irresponsible to build additional capacity. If you can use assistance dollars to fix critical infrastructure, make that the priority.
Prioritize below-ground infrastructure over above-ground. Many of our sewer and water systems are approaching 100 years old. When these core pipes fail, the problems cascade throughout the system. It’s possible market shifts or even technology may dramatically change how we use roads and streets, but water and sewer will still flow through pipes as it has for thousands of years. If given the chance, target your assistance spending underground.
Prioritize neighborhoods that are more than 75 years old. The firm Urban3 has modeled hundreds of cities across the country. In every one, the neighborhoods with the highest financial productivity are the ones that existed before World War II, even when they are occupied by the poorest people within the community. These are traditional neighborhoods but today they still have the greatest capacity to adapt to new realities. Investments in stabilizing these neighborhoods have the greatest potential to pay off.
When making infrastructure investments, the more you can let a neighborhood assessment of urgent needs guide your priorities, the more effective your efforts will be. Ground yourself in your people and places. The less time you spend chasing the shiny object or projecting theoretical new growth opportunities, the more likely your investments will help the community prosper.
Next week we’ll have some long term actions for a strong recovery.
Top photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels.
Want to go deeper? On Tuesday, March 19, at 12 p.m. Central, Chuck Marohn is presenting a free webinar on The Local Leader’s Toolkit. Chuck will describe the three phases of a Strong Towns response to the pandemic. He gets specific, with short-, medium-, and long-range tasks. This plan will improve your community’s recovery, lead to greater prosperity, and make your city more financially resilient — no matter what the future brings.
Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.