How Coronavirus Is Changing the Way we Live

If one thing is certain, it’s that our definition of normal has changed. After months staying at home, cities are reopening—some with masks and social distance, others with still growing numbers of infection. It’s unclear what cities will look like in a year or more, but in many areas, the landscape is already starting to shift.

With everybody spread further apart, the crux of many of these changes is space. Most people will need more of it, posing one of the great design challenges of the period for already built-up, congested cities. There will be a premium placed on repurposing outdoor space so that more gathering activities can take place in the open air. “We will need to transform the link between indoors and outdoors, to reshape streets as the prolongation of indoor areas,” says Carlos Moreno, professor of territorial entrepreneurship and innovation at IAE Sorbonne and adviser to the city of Paris.

To be sure, some communities may be defined by little change at all. If a vaccine becomes widely available, we may see much of the before environment return — but some cities are seizing this as an opportunity to invest in much needed infrastructure. And the recent protests against racism are fueling other policy changes across the cities.

Even in the most resistant places, there are some almost-ubiquitous changes that are built to be low-tech and easily removed: paint stripes on the sidewalk as a social distancing guideline, and hand sanitizer dispensers outside stores. “We won’t need to create new infrastructures,” says Moreno. It’s more about using existing ones more effectively.

The number of new Covid-19 cases around the globe is accelerating

Fueled by a surge in Latin America and the inland states of the U.S. Germany’s infection rate rose for a third day, lifted by local outbreaks, including one in a slaughterhouse. However, Beijing reported only nine new infections, a sign that a recent outbreak may be under control. Infections and deaths reported by Russian officials also flattened, but can we believe it? The overall global surge, though, is putting a world economic recovery in greater jeopardy.

By most accounts, the Brazilian and the U.S. governments have something in common: both have failed spectacularly at managing the coronavirus pandemic. Imported tests were first defective, then largely unavailable; misinformation about the virus was broadcast in politicized briefings; and lockdowns weren’t enforced quickly enough, all of which likely worsened the spread of a disease that’s already killed 120,000 Americans and 50,000 Brazilians. Now, with restrictions lifted earlier than advised and infection rates predictably spiking, calamities suffered in Europe are re-emerging in the Americas. And come winter, it may get even worse. Federal officials warn that this year’s flu season could overburden the health care system.