A View from Ohio

It's hard not to become obsessed with thinking about how society will act when (if?) the coronavirus pandemic eases, or even if it doesn't ease, if some people get their way and try to force things to reopen. Barring a magically effective treatment or a quickly developed, highly effective vaccine, it's hard to see how anything will happen very soon. I've already discussed this somewhat, and today I have some thoughts to share from another writer, Jason Szegedy, who's a planner for the city of Akron, Ohio.

The word "crisis" is one that is prone to abuse and overuse.... With the onset of this global pandemic, and the untold number of severe social and economic disruptions that are sure to follow in its wake, it is almost certain that we have entered into such an era — a Crisis — with a capital "C".

Crises of this sort ... are world-altering events that reshape and refocus all of society's institutions. They change the balance of power between the rights of the individual and the well-being of the group. They have life-changing and lifelong effects on every person....

The only world those of us born after 1960 have known is one in which individualism has grown progressively stronger, while institutions (of every kind) have grown progressively weaker. There are reasons for this (and pros and cons) but they aren't worth dwelling upon here.

It is a world in which ever-worsening social, political, and economic problems have been ignored and kicked further and further down the road. These are problems which, by their very nature, require collective sacrifice and strong institutions to address.

Ours is a society where institutions are weak; where people are used to a high degree of personal autonomy; and where the well-being of the individual is valued far above that of the group. There are pros and cons to having such a society.

One of the major cons of that type of society is that it is extremely vulnerable and unprepared for an unforeseeable and catastrophic event — an event like a global pandemic of uncertain duration. An event where strong institutions and decisive, collective action matter a lot.

At another time and in another place, the pandemic would have been an equally terrible and tragic event, but one that occurred in a place that was up to the task of taking the collective actions to manage it in a much more capable and competent way.

But we don't live in that time and place....

If you had asked me "A global pandemic of novel virus of uncertain duration will occur in your lifetime. At which social, economic, and political point in time would you have chosen for it to occur?"

I can't possibly imagine having it happen at a worse time.

Within the scope of my (not so short lifetime) this is the time of maximum political strife and dysfunction; maximum economic instability and inequality; and maximum levels of narcissistic individualism. You can fill in the blanks with who you blame the most for it.

But I'm not interested in blaming anyone for it. I'm interested in describing what is happening, and in thinking about what is likely to happen next, so that I can have some degree of understanding about where events are going to be taking us, and what might possibly be done.

Crises of the sort that we are now embarking upon tend to stop previous and familiar trends (an all-consuming individualism, a dearth of social cohesion, pervasive and profound institutional rot) in their tracks. Now the demand for order is high, but the supply of it is low.

Things that were previously celebrated or at least tolerated as normal (greed, corruption, rampant economic inequality) may increasingly begin to be viewed by the public as grotesque or even perverse — relics of a recent, but now dead an irrelevant past.

Trends that pundits, prognosticators, political scientists, economists, and urban planners were sure of continuing indefinitely six short weeks ago could be a dead letter. Social and economic forces thought to be unstoppable could reverse at an astonishing speed.

Ideas and public policies that were once considered unthinkable (both good and bad — I'll let you decide what those are) will now not only be thinkable, but will be actively pursued and implemented, with rapidly increasing public support, in the face of hardship.

I have no idea what the future holds. But it is possible to make some educated guesses.

I am guessing that we are going to see less globalization and more nationalism.

I would bet on more collectivism and less individualism.

I am guessing that however disruptive you imagine this pandemic will be to our way of life, you are still probably underestimating it. There will be dozens of social and economic dominoes yet to fall that we cannot envision yet.

That there will be much hardship and human suffering probably goes without saying. In the long-run, there may even be good that comes out of all of this disruption and heartache, but what that might look like is impossible to know right now.

The ability to adjust one's expectations to the realities of this crisis will become increasingly important as each day passes. People who are unable to think different thoughts from the ones that they thought six weeks ago are likely to be at a distinct disadvantage.

Life will go on, and we will get through this, but it is going to be very different for a long time. You and I are living through a world-altering event of the highest magnitude.

In terms of the urban planning and policy implications of what we are living through, I think we are going to be having a depression, not a recession. How that plays out in our cities and what that means for the urban policy issues that we debate — no one knows. Not yet.

I believe that under any possible scenario a lot of people in this country are going to be a lot poorer. And a lot of people who have never been poor before will be now.

I think that any urban policy work that does not assume this to be the case is missing the plot.

I will be happy to be wrong about all of this.

When everything gets back to normal, just like it was, I look forward to you quote tweeting it and calling me an idiot.