Author Archives: legallysociable

Less traffic, faster driving

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Reports suggest more drivers are going fast on emptier roads:

Despite there being far fewer vehicles on the road due to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders, state highway safety officials across the country are seeing a severe spike in speeding. Many states have reported alarming speed increases, with some noting a significant surge in vehicles clocked at 100 mph or more.

Being a safe driver should always be a priority, but during the coronavirus pandemic, traffic safety experts at the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) say it is more important than ever. “While COVID-19 is clearly our national priority, our traffic safety laws cannot be ignored,” said GHSA Executive Director Jonathan Adkins. “Law enforcement officials have the same mission as health care providers — to save lives. If you must drive, buckle up, follow the posted speed limit and look out for pedestrians and bicyclists. Emergency rooms in many areas of the country are at capacity, and the last thing they need is additional strain from traffic crash victims.”

During the past month, pedestrian and bicycle traffic are reported to have increased exponentially, while motor vehicle traffic is down. Adkins noted that GHSA is encouraged to see so many communities across the country making roadways more accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists. To keep roads safe for everyone, traffic safety officials nationwide are pleading with motorists to slow down and respect traffic safety laws…

A 2019 report on speeding by GHSA, “Speeding Away from Zero: Rethinking a Forgotten Traffic Safety Challenge,” highlights excessive vehicle speed as a persistent factor in nearly one-third of all motor vehicle-related fatalities, while a 2020 GHSA report on pedestrian fatalities, published in February, finds that pedestrians now account for 17% of all traffic-related fatalities.

In many metropolitan regions, traffic is pretty constant throughout the day. COVID-19 has reduced the number of daily work trips plus some of the other reasons for cars and trucks on the road.

With more open road, perhaps it is “natural” for drivers to feel they can go faster. I am reminded of the argument by New Urbanists that narrower roads lined with parked cars and trees close to the street push drivers to slow down. The illusion is that with fewer potential obstacles on the road, a driver can be safe even while going faster. Of course, going faster reduces the time drivers have to correct and avoid things in their path.

It would be interesting to note how much local police forces are responding to speeders now. Is it worth stopping them if there is a risk of transmitting COVID-19? Are police resources needed more elsewhere? At this point, what other options do officials have in reducing speeds on less crowded roads?

Mapping daily life amidst COVID-19

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I like the Citylab project of asking readers to submit their maps life during COVID-19. A few thoughts:

1. COVID-19 affects multiple dimensions of social life, including the distance people must keep from each other (and social interactions). The maps help highlight the spatial dimensions of COVID-19, reminding us of the relatively free mobility many people have during normal times (think regular commutes, a sprawling country often based on driving a car to different locations). The maps also highlight the difficulties or significant changes because of reduced mobility. On one hand, we have more technology than ever that lets us access people and places wherever all the time. On the other hand, not being able to move as we typically do is worth acknowledging.

2. It can be both fun and informative to ask people to draw their daily activities or their community. It pushes people to think spatially (which they may or may not do on a regular basis) and can quickly show what places they find more meaningful. Asking about someone’s day often leads to a list of activities or tasks; the map can include this information but add a valuable spatial dimension.

3. As a bonus, such maps not only provide information but they also allow people to display their creativity. This is clear in the Citylab maps: the contrasts of color, styles, and interpretations is engaging. Compared to more common methods of data collection like surveys or interviews, drawing a map provides a worthwhile contrast.

4. Perhaps reduced mobility will push more Americans to know their immediate surroundings in and around their residences. Instead of passing many places while driving, current circumstances may push more people to pass places at walking or bicycling speed. I know I see my neighborhood differently through regular walks; perhaps other will have similar experiences.

 

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Another fear regarding outside basketball courts: spreading COVID-19

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The closing of parks and recreation spaces has come as part of restrictions put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19. In reading online discussions regarding these closings and observations that some people continue to engage in group activity, multiple sports have come up. One stuck out to me: playing basketball.

I have argued in previous posts (see here, here, here, and here) that there is a lack of basketball courts in parks and community areas in many places. Even though basketball is a popular sport, there are not as many courts as there could be. Why? The people who often use such facilities are young men, not a demographic many communities are looking to see congregate regularly.

Now, there is a new reason to conspire against building basketball courts: they are public health risks when diseases like COVID-19 are present. If social distancing helps stop the spread, basketball as a sport does not lend itself to this with its close contact and relatively small playing surface. Shooting hoops in the driveway with family members is one thing; courts in parks could attract up to ten players at a time (more if halfcourt games are in process) plus whoever else might be waiting. Add in that schools are in remote learning mode and the crowds that might end up at basketball courts could prove worrisome.

Other sports regularly played in parks or other recreational activities could face the same issue. Baseball and softball games generally provide some space yet the batter, catcher, and umpire are regularly close, runner and fielders end up near other, and then there is the matter of dugouts. Soccer games take place on large fields yet chasing the ball presents problems in getting near other players. Tennis is often played at a distance but players have to occasionally come to the net. People walking, running, and biking can adjust to put more distance between them and others (unless the sidewalks or paths do not allow this).

Yet, these other sports and the spaces needed to carry them out do not always receive the same negative attention as basketball courts. In a post-COVID-19 world, will outdoor basketball courts become even more scarce in favor of recreation activities that give participants more space?

Subways and individual cars during COVID-19

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A new study suggests New York City’s subway system helped spread COVID-19:

The paper, by MIT economics professor and physician Jeffrey Harris, points to a parallel between high ridership “and the rapid, exponential surge in infections” in the first two weeks of March — when the subways were still packed with up to 5 million riders per day — as well as between turnstile entries and virus hotspots.

“New York City’s multitentacled subway system was a major disseminator — if not the principal transmission vehicle — of coronavirus infection during the initial takeoff of the massive epidemic,” argues Harris, who works as a physician in Massachusetts.

While the study concedes that the data “cannot by itself answer question of causation,” Harris says the conditions of a typical subway car or bus match up with the current understanding of how the virus spreads…

“Social density … was a result of many factors — business, restaurants, bars, Madison Square Garden, sports arenas, concerts, and the things that make New York happen,” Foye said.

New York City is already unique with its level of mass transit use. The large subway system helps people move around in a crowded city where both parking and driving a car can prove difficult.

The contrast to New York City is sprawling suburbia (including within the New York City region – see Levittown). Americans love to drive and the suburbs are built around cars, driving, and covering relatively large distances on a daily basis within a private vehicle.

With Americans already predisposed toward driving if they can, will COVID-19 increase their reluctance to take mass transit? Is driving safer in these times? (Of course, one could look at the number of deaths related to cars – accidents, pedestrians – and argue otherwise.)

New York City is not the only city dependent on subways; numerous large cities around the world need subways to move large numbers of people. Perhaps there will be new health measures in subways and other forms of mass transit moving forward. But, without fundamentally altering such cities and the benefits that come with density, subways cannot be removed or limited on a long-term basis – can they?

Wealthier Americans looking for homes away from urban COVID-19 cases

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With the spread of COVID-19 within major metropolitan areas, particularly New York City, some residents might be looking for new homes outside the big city:

At the same time, well-off suburbs in areas like Greenwich, Connecticut, and Westchester County in New York, which had been relatively sluggish in recent years, quietly recorded strong performances in the first quarter, with few signs of slowing down…

For prospective buyers reacting specifically to the threat of coronavirus in New York City, suburban infrastructure may also hold a stronger appeal than what’s available in a typical vacation town.

“The general consensus is once this is over, you’re going to see a big surge in sales,” Mr. Pruner said. “But a lot of the traditional vacation spots may not necessarily see that. One of the issues is that they don’t necessarily have good medical facilities—even if you own a big house there, they don’t have the hospital or the resources”to go with it.

Though tastes have been trending toward smaller homes in recent years, buyers coming off the experience of their home suddenly becoming their entire family’s office, gym, school and recreation area are unsurprisingly now coming to their searches with a heightened appreciation for space, a fact that could bode well for suburban markets.

A few thoughts in response:

  1. This likely applies to a small segment of the real estate market: people with the resources and jobs to move during the COVID-19 crisis. Plus, the analysis here seems mostly geared toward higher-end homes. Could be worth keeping an eye on for the near future: how many well-off Americans make real estate decisions within the next few months?
  2. Conventional wisdom suggests potential homebuyers care about high quality school districts (for their kids’ education and the effect on property values). How many buyers going forward will also consider medical facilities? And what is the correlation between high-performing suburban school districts and nearby high-quality medical facilities?
  3. Given the moves in vacation spots – like the Hamptons or in the state of Michigan – to try to limit travel to second homes, might there be any long-lasting consequences? The influx of vacationers can already cause tensions but they can also be a very important source of business and income.
  4. The flip side of this analysis is the development of urban residences that emphasize health in different ways. It is not about providing a gym or a pool (which are not helpful during social distancing guidelines); it is about having buildings and residences with lower likelihoods of contracting illnesses. Imagine all antimicrobial resistant surfaces, units on their own air systems, separate entrances and hallways that limit contact with others, particular cleaning protocols, and other possibilities.

Publication in Soc of Religion: “Religious Freedom and Local Conflict: Religious Buildings and Zoning Issues in the New York City Region,1992-2017”

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Sociology of Religion today published online my article referenced in the title to the post:

ReligiousFreedomandLocalConflictWeb

I came to this article through wanting to analyze the connection between religion and place. Having seen at least a few stories of religious zoning conflict in the Chicago area (see an earlier study here), I wondered whether these patterns held across different metropolitan regions (and all the variations that could exist there), a longer time period, and within different communities within metropolitan regions. As the abstract suggests, there are some similarities – for example, locations near residences or requests from Muslim groups receive more attention – and differences – including what religious groups are in each region (with a larger population of Orthodox Jewish residents in the New York City region).
More broadly, zoning is a powerful tool communities have. As they set their land use guidelines, they are making decisions about what they envision their community looking like. This applies both to the physical structure or spaces as well as who might reside or work in the community. Americans tend to like local government, in part because it exercises control over what might locate near their homes or residences. But, this impulse to protect homes and property values can come up against other interests a community might have, such as affordable housing or medical facilities.

Home all day, hear the noise of daily work around your residence

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With more people at home during the day, they can hear more of what goes on during a typical day. And they may not like it:

Cities, towns and villages in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere in the country have created bans or sought voluntary cuts in the use of leaf blowers in suburban neighborhoods. Town leaders noted that with everyone sheltering in home, the constant din was an added nuisance…

The municipal actions are a departure in the ongoing saga of leaf blowers, one marked, in many towns, by equal parts irritation and inaction. Everyone hates hearing them down the block, but no one complains about the swift and eye-pleasing work they accomplish on their own lawns. And so a silent majority has carried on, under the whine of the motor.

Some residents have apparently questioned whether the machines could be spreading the coronavirus. The village of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. raised the same worry on Twitter this week…

In Westfield, N.J., Mayor Shelley Brindle, in a statement, asked homeowners and landscapers to keep the blowers locked away until at least noon ever day.

This comes amid broader discussions about banning gas leaf blowers and other gas-powered outdoor equipment. Compared to electric or battery-powered equipment, they produce more noise and exhaust. This could be an interesting time to nudge people toward different equipment – in the name of noise, environmental concerns – though asking them to do so in the midst of a crisis will make it more difficult.

I wonder how much the perception of the noise problem is also due to the time of year. I wrote two years ago about common summer noises that can interrupt tranquility: air conditioners, lawnmowers, construction, etc. Once the weather starts warming up, more people are outside and more people are doing work outside. The person in one house who wants to sit on their deck and enjoy some peace and quiet competes with the person next door who enjoys keeping their yard neat and green. And both of them may dislike the municipal road project that reconstructs the next street over and produces noise for weeks. If the COVID-19 induced lockdown started in November, would people have the same noises to complain about?

At the same time, dealing with noise is tricky among neighbors and within a community. People generally know that certain locations are noisier than others and adjust accordingly. Some people even live right under runway paths. Businesses also have a stake in this; as is noted at the end of the article cited above, not using certain yard equipment is possible but raking and pruning by hand will take more time and cost more money. Keeping everyone happy regarding noise is likely to be difficult.

Shifting to “physical distancing” and “social solidarity”

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Sociologist Eric Klinenberg follows up his New York Times op-ed with comments in the Chicago Tribune explaining why “physical distancing” is a better term than “social distancing”:

“A lot depends on us making this change,” Klinenberg said when I reached him by phone Friday at his home in New York. “To ask for ‘social distancing’ implies that we should go home and close our doors and turn our back on the people around us. That’s precisely wrong. We need social connections, social solidarity, more than ever before. It’s feeling social solidarity that leads us to lend a hand to the most vulnerable people around us – the elderly, the homeless and those who are doing what we now call essential work, who are at enormous risk.

“Of course we need physical distancing to prevent the virus from spreading,” Klinenberg said. “It’s transmitted through physical contact. It’s not transmitted through social bonds. And it’s social closeness that will help us help each other through this and help us rebuild. So if we stigmatize social life through our terminology, if we praise individualism and just taking care of ourselves, we run the risk of making the problem even worse.”

Perhaps there are two ways to approach this. First, changing the term could indeed matter. Second, with or without a changed term, the appeal to individualism and private action in staying away from others could be a powerful one in a country that celebrates individualism.

At the least, Klinenberg’s call could push some people to pay more attention to their social interactions in a time when typical social interactions are discouraged and dangerous. Klinenberg’s earlier work suggests that social bonds are already tenuous in a number of communities. In normal times, it is relatively easy to engage in patterns that do not require much thought. When that normalcy is disrupted, continuing those regular patterns requires flexibility and new ideas.

And, it remains to be seen how social bonds continue after the time of COVID-19. Will normal social interaction occur? Will there be new precautions (such as no or limited handshakes)? Will some who sheltered in place for a long period continue in those patterns? The length of the new policies, interactions during COVID-19, and hard-to-predict social changes (spanning economics, politics, and social life) could all influence future interactions (including the possibility that social bonds will be strengthened significantly after COVID-19 recedes).

Chicago suburb feared COVID-19 facility in empty hotel

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Building on earlier posts on COVID-19 NIMBYism and COVID-19 in suburbs, I return to a particular suburban case: many residents in the Chicago suburb of Itasca opposed a 2019 proposal for a drug rehab facility in an empty hotel. In recent days, concern mounted as the community thought that same hotel could become a facility to treat COVID-19:

The fate of a shuttered hotel in Itasca took another strange turn this week when local officials briefly thought it might be used to quarantine COVID-19 patients suffering mild symptoms or those at heightened risk from the virus.

It turned out to be a false rumor, but its circulation illustrates the opaque process through which government officials are trying to line up buildings for use in the response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Illinois Emergency Management Agency has asked its county-level counterparts to create “an alternative housing plan” to assist at least 25 people. The federal government would reimburse counties for sheltering those who have been exposed to or tested positive for COVID-19 but don’t require hospitalization, and “asymptomatic high-risk individuals needing social distancing as a precautionary measure.”

Some counties, though, aren’t saying much about their searches. Asked for specifics, a spokesman for the DuPage County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said only that “we are working with our municipal agencies to identify needs as well as identifying potential community partners for potential housing.”

Read on for more details of official letters from the mayor to the medical company and back, bureaucratic vagueness, sharing theories on a local Facebook group, and the official denial.

Given how this played out, is it a wonder that some officials might follow an “opaque process”? If a county or state feels they need a facility as it has particular advantages, opposition from local residents could make it very difficult to move forward.

According to the DuPage County Department of Health COVID-19 Dashboard (as of 4/10/20), Itasca had seven cases of COVID-19. This is where the typical NIMBY concerns – reduced property values, a threat to an existing way of life or the character of the community – makes less sense: COVID-19 is present in Itasca. Granted, it is less present there than in other DuPage County communities. But, a facility in Itasca could be helpful for local residents. The same question arose with the proposed drug treatment facility; is drug rehab an issue in Itasca, surrounding suburbs, and DuPage County or is it only an issue that occurs elsewhere? In both of these cases, the medical conditions can affect people across all sorts of communities.

More on COVID-19 in suburbs

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While much of the COVID-19 attention has been on cities, it is also present in suburban locations. Yesterday, I looked at cases in DuPage County west of Chicago. Today, a little digging around for other suburban locations:

Westchester County, New York

The New York region leads the United States in number of cases and deaths. Westchester County is a wealthy county just north of the city. Early on, an outbreak in New Rochelle received attention. According to figures for the county as of a few days ago, it looks like COVID-19 is in a number of community in sizable numbers.

Nassau and Suffolk Counties, New York

These Long Island suburban counties have thousands of cases and as of April 9 are being watched by officials:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said health officials “watching” Nassau and Suffolk counties as the number of deaths related to novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is on the rise.

There have now been 18,548 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Nassau County – up 1,938 from the day before, while Suffolk County has reached 15,844 cases, an increase of 291…

“We’ve been watching Rockland County, Nassau County, Suffolk County closely,” he said. “We’re looking at the concentric circles around New York City, and the natural spread circles are toward the suburbs. Westchester has already had trouble, now we’re seeing new hotspots on Long Island and the other suburbs.

Seattle area, Washington

King County, Washington is home both to Seattle and over a million suburban residents and two surrounding counties, Snohomish and Pierce, have more suburban residents. An update on the cases and deaths as of last night:

King County has been struck the hardest with Covid-19 with 3,688 cases and 244 deaths. Snohomish County reports 1,695 cases and 63 deaths. Pierce County reports 795 cases and 16 deaths.

From mid-March, a story of how the Seattle suburb of Kirkland responded in early March:

Within hours, Kirkland, an affluent mid-sized suburb that until two weeks ago was best known outside of Washington as the namesake for Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand, became the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

More than 60 Kirkland residents, including people staying there temporarily, have died from or been hospitalized with the virus. Nearly all of them were associated with Life Care Center. Many patients with symptoms are at EvergreenHealth, a Kirkland hospital, which has seen nearly 100 confirmed cases and 24 deaths.

Kirkland’s response to the crisis is being watched around the country, and other cities are looking to them for guidance as infections spread.

New Orleans area

An update from yesterday shows numerous cases in and around New Orleans:

Orleans and Jefferson parishes continue to lead all other parishes with their coronavirus cases. According to Thursday’s update, New Orleans has 5,242 cases while Jefferson Parish is reporting 4,480 cases…

Other parishes seeing high case numbers include East Baton Rouge, Caddo and St. Tammany. Health officials continue to monitor St. John the Baptist, Ascension and Lafourche parishes where cases are in the 300-400 range.

In sum, numerous suburban counties and communities outside of major cities hit by COVID-19 are also facing significant numbers of cases. Various factors could be at play including race/ethnicity, the locations of jobs and workplaces, and the ability of suburban governments and organizations to respond to the threat.

(And a bonus story from ABC in Australia: how residents of Australian suburbs are coping with isolation.)