Eternal Cities: Life & Death In The Corona Era
By: Sondre Sommerfelt
Tags: Covid-19, Work, Pandemic, Urban Planning, Urbanism

From the black death to Covid-19, pandemics have always put their marks on cities. But catastrophes are often catalysts for change, offering previously non-existing opportunities, and post-corona developments should lead to real improvements.

There’s a 12th-century Norwegian tale about a girl who coven the ‘Black Death’ only to develop PTSD. In the spring of 1349, after a merchant ship arrives in Bergen on the west coast of Norway, bringing with it the plague, people die like flies, but the girl and her family escape, hiding in the inner end of one the narrowest tributaries of the deep Sogne fjord. The disease tracks them down, killing off her family, but miraculously the girl survives and flees to the mountains, where she hides in the remote valley of Jostedalen. Wandering lost and alone in the wilderness, she suffers from amnesia, even forgetting her own name, and when she’s finally found by local mountain farmers, they name her Jostredalsrypa: ‘The Grouse of Jostedalen’.

People from Bergen boast that they were first in Norway to encounter the plague. Historians, however, believe the pandemic initially arrived in Oslo the previous autumn, in 1348, and that the original Norwegian outbreak was in the Oslo bay of Bjørvika. After Eastern Norway endured a typically cold winter, the outbreak died out, but Bergen, meanwhile — known for being the rainiest city in Europe — experienced its customary wet winter. When the plague arrived, therefore, it spread like a pest, from Bergen to the mountains east, and when it reached Oslo, the city was abandoned. As a Viking kingdom, Norway collapsed like a soufflé.

City life as we know it was created in the wake of two of history’s deadliest pandemics: cholera and Spanish flu

Pandemics attack what makes us human: fellowship. They feed on the bonds between us, destroying the social fabric which connects us. At worst, they can wipe out whole societies, with life in the city, where community networks are most closely knit, especially vulnerable. The history of cities is the history of civilisation: the words themselves are intertwined. These days, this probably offers little comfort to those that work within the culture, hospitality and nightlife industries — the soft infrastructures of a city — but city life as we know it was created in the wake of two of history’s deadliest pandemics: cholera and Spanish flu. Pandemics have always shaped cities: even Oslo had its comeback after the plague. Admittedly, though, it took a damned long time, nearly 900 years: building a new settlement again from scratch, a village, a small colonial town, and then, for the second time around, the capital of Norway.

The cliché insists that we can learn from the past, but maybe what we can do is to recognise patterns in history. Crises such as wars and pandemics give us opportunities that probably didn’t exist prior. We can start over again, with blank white sheets and new colourful crayons. Catastrophes are often catalysts for change that is long overdue but needs one extra push to succeed. Cholera outbreaks in the mid 19th century spread in dangerous environments in cities with overcrowding, miserable sanitary conditions, and an absence of light and air. The disease was waterborne and thereby also life-threatening for the upper classes and the new industrial bourgeoisie. Thus, parts of big cities were quickly demolished. City planners like Cerà in Barcelona and Haussmann in Paris designed new ones, with open street networks and ‘healthy’ homes with high ceilings and big windows filled with light and air. Likewise, for fear of viruses, the utopian planner with the Dickensian name, Ebenezer Howard, created garden cities.

The new city facilitated both café culture and flaneuring, which resulted in both morning and afternoon walks, as well as a lot of hanging around staring

Haussmann’s Paris, with its 20 arrondissements of boulevards, monuments, squares and parks, invited polite society to engage in leisure. Those not so polite were crushed or — in the grand tradition of form follow function, with modern street designed to facilitate the practise — they were cannoned. The new city facilitated both café culture and flaneuring, which resulted in both morning and afternoon walks, as well as a lot of hanging around staring. It even encouraged the different classes to mingle, or at least a little. Boulevards and streets were lit with 56,000 gas lamps, so bright to 19th-century folks that the city was nicknamed ‘La Ville Lumiere’. The City of Light needed leisure activities suitable for satisfying the new bourgeoisie’s thirst for entertainment and the working class’ desire for recreation on Sundays, the one day off they had. Cosy bistros, noisy brasseries and extravagant cabaret theatres were all customised for this new, dynamic lifestyle.

It is more difficult to see the direct, positive consequences of the Spanish flu. The Roaring Twenties followed the pandemic over the New Year of 1919, with ten years of prosperity, partying and progress (or good music, loose morals and financial irresponsibility). The flu is thus an anomaly, both as a pandemic and as a historical imperative. Like most pandemics, it arose at the end of a meaningless war with horrific sanitation. It came, killed between 50–100 million people, and disappeared again. Few took the trouble to document it for posterity. The pandemic is surprisingly absent in literature produced by the generation’s authors, like Fitzgerald or Hemingway, who lived through it. (It is mentioned in letters as very annoying.) War trumps disease. In numbers, however, the Spanish flu is of a greater significance to the ‘lost generation’ than the war itself. The war took “only” 18–20 million lives. Young people were particularly exposed to both war and flu, and especially young men. It attacked those who had not accumulated (ordinary) flu immunity, and swept through the trenches, barracks and hospitals.

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future

Society changed quickly after the war. A surplus of women filled the vacuum in the workplace, in politics and in culture, and reduced the class system on both sides of the Atlantic. Women cut their hair, put on trousers, enjoyed life and their freedom, and they danced away their sorrows after losing their youth. (Dancing had been illegal during the pandemic.) They demanded equality with men, control over their own bodies, full political participation, economic independence, the right to visit diners, smoke, drive drunk from speakeasys, play tennis, and go on holiday to the Riviera. (The last two or three demands were first and foremost from upper-class women). The ‘flapper’ style, with its slender silhouette, was entirely suitable for movement. Power and the economy shifted from Europe’s now old-fashioned cities to the new American cities. The symbol of the modern conurbation was now no longer boulevards, but skyscrapers. This vitalised city life touted a revolution of newly created activities and social spaces, like departments stores, cinemas and sports stadiums. Unfortunately, from now on the car steered urban development, first as its saviour, doing away with layers of horse manure, stench and potential disease, and then as its villain.

‘Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.’ The quote is attributed to Niels Bohr, but more likely it’s a joke on Bohr’s behalf by Danish comedian Storm P. Either way, it’s Danish. And nonetheless, there are a few signs of the times: monstrous office buildings have had their day, and the block party is finally over. The 20th century monuments of prosperity which excitedly rose after the World War I — towers crammed with worker bees — are clearly past their peak. The corona hasn’t changed anything, merely accelerated and boosted trends already here before the virus struck. At Wall Street and in the City of London, streets are empty as if swept by a plague (sic). Property giants registered in tax havens on islands far away from the cities on which they have a grip have experienced big losses and slashed their portfolios. Rental prices have fallen drastically. This downfall is expected to continue.

In today’s standstill, where we only move when it’s absolutely necessary, we live, strangely enough, closer to the pre-industrial era

Zoom has taken over the working day, and this was long overdue. In theory, the internet liberated us from our desks in the 90s, and since the beginning of the millennium video-chat has been a good excuse for not meeting in person. But it was a pandemic that broke our ingrained work habits. Until March this year — that’s 2020! — many workplaces, and especially many public enterprises, offered no solutions for home office working. Now, half a year later, and into our second lockdown, few are eager to return to the five-day office week. Most would rather have a hybrid approach, working remotely and in-person, splitting the week between office, home, and a nearby ‘third space’. Commuting has always been a drag. Bosses are most sceptical, of course. Mid-level executives, especially, are unsure whether they can manage teams via Teams. Collaboration may be diluted, but more time away from colleagues, and more time at home with family, arguably balance each other out. In today’s standstill, where we only move when it’s absolutely necessary, we live, strangely enough, closer to the pre-industrial era, before both Haussmann and the car. Merchants deliver to the door, services are mainly local, and we work at home, or at least in its proximity. This has an environmental effect in a double sense: it gives Mother Earth the opportunity to breathe a sigh of relief, and allows us to rediscover how nice our locale is. It’s like living in a village!

There are signs people are fleeing the city for country life. Rural bliss sounds tempting right now. Maybe the flux will continue post-corona. First and foremost, we’ll find a new balance between work and leisure, location and mobility. Bill Gates predicts that half of all business travel will disappear. In the spring, just weeks after the pandemic shutdown, Twitter declared that its employees could work from home forever. Not long after, Mark Zuckerberg announced via live stream to his employees that over the next five to 10 years about half of the company is working remotely, permanently. Even with a decline of a third of the work in office buildings — which is not an unreasonable consequence of the pandemic — the implication for big cities are enormous. City infrastructure (both hard and soft) will change, and buildings will be left empty.

Already small businesses are starting to go bankrupt as a result of the pandemic. Many are worried that after the disease has ridden the cities, only big chains will be left. For the city’s ‘health’, however, a greater worry is slow bureaucracy and lazy politicians (as always). Speculative offices and luxury condos for the super-rich are still being built. These structures are useless in the city, and environmental disasters. For small, wealthy nations like Norway, the biggest threat to city life is the government, the largest corporation in the land. In Oslo, monstrous office blocks are being built dead centre in a mid-sized city for the always expanding bureaucracy. If finalized, this will have huge consequences for the cities’ ‘well-being’ far into the future.

We urgently need a Haussmann for our time, an ‘EcoPlan Cerà’ with a healthy mixture of both city and country planning

We urgently need a Haussmann for our time, an ‘EcoPlan Cerà’ with a healthy mixture of both city and country planning. With careful oversight, the plan must steer the development of local communities on the fringe of cities away from car dependency, remaking them into walkable neighbourhoods. In the city, redundant office blocks should be turned into housing so that financial districts can transform from ghost structures to liveable communities. The attraction of ‘neighbourhood living’ has been given a timely boost by the pandemic. The somewhat utopian idea of a ‘15-Minute City’ — one where we’ll work, sleep, shop, dine, be educated, entertain and be entertained within walkable distance of each other — has become more realistic. In the meantime, cities emptied by coronavirus should be occupied, and office blocks in central areas should be filled with creative and leisure activities for the broad range of urban citizens.

From the black death that transformed class power in Europe’s medieval cities, via the cholera and Spanish flu that similarly changed class dynamics in western society, to the latest hyper-globalized epidemics of Ebola, Sars and Covid, where nature is sending us a powerful message, pandemics rarely fail to leave their mark on a metropolis. The changes that will come post-corona should therefore lead to real improvements. Political support for urban policies must put community interest ahead of corporate ones. Just as after cholera and the Spanish flu, city life and culture will co-steer developments and prove decisive for the result. And, as in the roaring 20s, all of us will dance, because every city will at last have space for a Berghain.