COVID-19 New Norms in Urbanism & Design: Q&A with Julia D. Day
Director & Team Lead at Gehl New York
The APA Urban Design Committee is conducting a series of conversations with urbanists who are thinking about the future of Urbanism and Design in the age of COVID-19. Through interviews and personal anecdotes, member Charlie Cunningham is committed to documenting thoughts from prominent Urban Designers on planning amidst the new normal. If you are interested in sharing your thoughts and experiences, please message him on Linkedin and share socially with your network.
Julia D. Day is Director and Team Lead at Gehl New York, a Planning firm focusing on how the built environment connects to peoples’ quality of life.
Charlie Cunningham: What is your role and where do you work?
Julia D. Day: Director, Team Lead, Gehl NY
Charlie: How long have you been practicing self-quarantine, isolation, social distancing, or shelter in place?
Julia: Since Monday March 16th
Charlie: What was the transition period like for you and your work, friends, and family?
Julia: This has been surreal in many ways — the beginning was marked by shock: reading the news each night and watching the numbers rise and shelter in place ordinances fall into place around the country. The first week felt like we weren’t grasping reality and were just working from home a bit more than normal, but by the end of that week, when we realized we probably should ask the woman who watches our two-year-old to stay home, the severity sank in, as well as the reality of needing to redefine a typical work day.
Charlie: How has the pandemic affected your work and daily routine?
Julia: At Gehl, our work focuses on people and to a large part human interaction — spending time with people face to face and creating shared experiences where we can observe places together is the foundation of most projects. While we travel a lot and are accustomed to working remotely and using digital conferencing and facilitation tools, this typically happens for a few days at a time. Fortunately, people were healthy and the first week felt normal-ish for our small team, but we quickly realized the need to incorporate new digital tools into our workflow. Since, we’ve been testing methods to facilitate digital client workshops with upwards of 20 participants, storyboard design presentations across a project team, and engage community members in prioritizing designs for a downtown public realm plan in Berkeley.
As evidence-based designers, we also felt the need to get into the field. Around week 4, we conducted a mini Public Space, Public Life (PSPL) survey at six locations near our homes, in Brooklyn and Queens. The intent was to identify insights about how public life behaviors are changing, as well as to explore an approach for safe public space data collection methods at this time. As you might imagine, PSPL observations support what many around the world are calling for — an urgent need to dedicate more street space to people, especially on narrow sidewalks, near essential services, and at park entries and adjacent streets. A summary of initial findings is captured here.
On a personal note, my toddler has more TV in her life! Fortunately my partner is an artist and very resourceful at making up time-consuming activities, like building an interactive house from cardboard, complete with a mailbox, windows, seating, and artwork for the walls.
Charlie: What differences have you noticed in the immediate urban fabric of your neighborhood, city, or quarantine zone?
Julia: NYC is full of contrasts, regularly, but the dichotomy of beauty and grief feels exacerbated right now. I live on the ground floor of an 8-unit, 4-story walk-up, that’s connected to 9 other buildings. There is a warm sense of togetherness on my block — neighbors give each other flowers grown at the community garden across the street — at a distance, others have loaned my toddler maracas to shake at the 7pm clap (with Clorox wipes to sanitize), or offered to share toilet paper and cans of tuna fish. At the same time, grief and eeriness hang over us — we worry for our neighbor’s 21-year-old son who is an EMT and hasn’t been home in weeks to not infect his parents, struggle to know what to say when children stare longingly at each other, wondering why they can’t play together like normal on the front stoops, worry that loved local businesses and restaurants won’t be able to re-open, and wonder how we can show a sense of solidarity with others when we all have masks on, shielding our facial expressions and making human interaction feel even more removed than it already can in a large, anonymous city.
Charlie: As an Urban Design practitioner, what changes to the built or physical environment should become part of the planning and design thought process after COVID-19?
Julia: We need more space for people! New Yorkers are desperate for space — this was true pre-COVID-19 and is exacerbated now. While the economic toll of the pandemic is hard to comprehend, the changes on our streets — fewer cars, cleaner air, the ability to hear birds — presents New York with an incredible opportunity to reimagine streets as vital public spaces that can support our mental and physical health. Another world and way is possible, and now there are direct ways for people to experience what this feels like. We need to understand the new use patterns today and use them to inform public realm design and management changes that permanently create more quality open space.
Additionally, we need to start thinking about our neighborhood networks in a finer grained way. Findings from a global online survey Gehl recently completed revealed that 87% of people report using their neighborhood streets as a primary public space to be outside. Space for people is not just a nice to have perk — it is essential for people to exercise, relax, run errands, and connect with others — and especially to support essential workers, still commuting daily. The methodical collection of evidence around where and how people are using public spaces, and how this varies based on community context and age, for example, can inform a strategy for where and how to act. From here, we can start to identify how best to prioritize limited resources and investments, especially in communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 — in New York, areas with higher rates of COVID-19 tend to have higher numbers of Black and Latino residents — and create a baseline to measure impact against and understand who benefits, as well as how to refine and scale in the future. The weather is getting warmer. People are getting antsy. We have to act now, but do so with a clear vision that makes those actions intentional and strategic.
Charlie: As difficult as it may be, has isolation or social distancing had any unexpected benefits?
Julia: Reading the news can easily push one into a depression, but at the same time, a global pause has shown how many of the things we’ve been asking for in cities are possible, and can happen overnight with the right leadership and priorities. We can reduce air pollution, provide shelter to the homeless, and repurpose streets for walking and biking. These are things many of us in the people-first design world devote our careers too — and to see actions come to life so quickly is inspiring. How we make human wellbeing a constant priority after the pandemic is now our charge and challenge.
Additionally, the pandemic has reaffirmed how essential public spaces are to our health — especially in dense cities. I hope that the new experiences people have in public — the ability to use and see their streets as vital community spaces, to breathe cleaner air — will fuel an even stronger citizen’s movement for quality public space as vital to health and wellbeing for all. Especially for the most vulnerable populations, such as those with comorbidities, living in neighborhoods with existing spatial inequalities (lack of open space, dominated by vehicular traffic), or susceptible to loneliness, and not just a perk for those who can afford it.
Charlie: Have you participated in any new routines, invented creative forms of socially distant contact (online happy hours, distant picnics, movie watching parties, etc), supported neighbors, or other urbanist community efforts while in isolation?
Julia: I’m 9 months pregnant and this pause has created a unique moment to enjoy the last months of one on one time (more one on one than I ever imagined!) that I’ll have with my two year old, Marea. It’s also led me to connect more with family. Every week my extended maternal family gathers on Zoom, videoing in from Italy, Germany, Holland, Denver, Los Angeles, NJ and NY — our first gathering was to celebrate my great aunt’s 90th birthday and entailed a two-hour phone call to get her set up on Zoom, but she did it, and calls in weekly. I’ve even roped my mom and sister into taking a weekly prenatal fitness class with me, using Zoom’s shared screen feature.
This past week, my amazing Gehl colleagues surprised me with a maternity leave send-off: a physically distanced visit in northern Central Park, some of them biking more than 15 miles from Brooklyn. Aside from seeing neighbors and immediate family, this was the most intentional physically distanced social contact I’d had since early March and it was a good reminder that while we can’t go back to normal right away, we can find alternatives to staying connected and together.
Charlie: Are there specific ways you have focused on staying positive throughout this temporary new reality?
Julia: I can get cynical, but ultimately, I try to remind myself: another world is possible, another way is possible. If we want to change things we can. It’s not about money, it’s about priorities.
Charlie: What haven’t we asked about? Is there anything else in relation to this dynamic time you would like to share?
Julia: Over the past six weeks, Gehl has been out in the field (at safe distances!) and running an online survey to observe and understand public life and public space use today. The links below discuss findings from this work in more detail:
Public Space Plays Vital Role in the Pandemic
A Gehl global survey on public space usage during the COVID-19 pandemic reveals an astounding glimpse into public life today. Hailing from 40 U.S. states, 68 countries, and every continent (save Antarctica), over 2,000 respondents shared the vital and varied roles that public spaces play in their everyday lives.
Managing Public Space in the ‘New Normal’
A post discussing findings from a mini-Public Space, Public Life Survey in NYC and actions cities can take to manage public spaces in an ever shifting ‘new normal’.
Public Space, Public Life During COVID-19
With the support of Realdania and the City of Copenhagen, Gehl worked with 60 surveyors in four cities in Denmark to observe and understand how our streets and public spaces, our parks and our playgrounds are serving the very unique needs of our communities during this pandemic. The first results are listed here both in terms of snapshots of public life during the “lock-down” as well as highlights of the collected data.
Learn more about Gehl here.
About the Author
Charlie Cunningham is a dedicated urbanist and Project Manager at the firm EA Creative in New York City, focusing on the intersection of Urban Design, Architecture, and Technology at the human level. You can follow more of his photos, stories, and current fieldwork on Instagram and Twitter @charlieprima.
Voices of Urban Design is a discussion forum that is curated by the APA New York Metro Chapter’s Urban Design Committee. Posts are edited for clarity and length only; opinions and statements that appear in this blog are not endorsed by the American Planning Association nor its affiliates. We expect and encourage healthy debate!
