A New City Streetscape: Investigating Public Space Programs in New York City under COVID-19

Abstract

In light of the global COVID-19 pandemic, cities around the world have implemented pedestrianization programs to provide safe spaces for people to physically distance while being outside. In New York City, four new public space programs emerged over the summer of 2020 to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, facilitate the reopening of businesses, and allow residents to safely spend time outdoors. All of these programs entailed the transformation of vehicular roadways into pedestrian priority spaces, contributing to and accelerating an existing trend towards pedestrianizing the city. This paper broadly investigates the benefits and drawbacks of these novel pedestrianization programs, their spatial impacts on the city’s public spaces and their social and economic impacts on the city’s residents over the course of the past year. The programs have been successful in terms of increased visibility and promotion, participant eligibility, ease of application and approval, and communication and collaboration between city agencies and communities. However, the accelerated timeline under which the programs were implemented also led to hidden barriers and unintended consequences, such as prescriptive and inhibitive program regulations, inconsistent inspections and policy enforcement, and failure to address existing urban inequalities in the city. Moreover, this paper explores the interplay of different actors in governing the development of urban public spaces, with a specific focus on the role of the architect as related to COVID-19 in New York City. Given the benefits and drawbacks of the novel public space programs, the process of pedestrianization was ambiguous at times and required expert navigation. As both design work and community engagement were critical for the implementation of the new programs, architects had to take on a more diverse set of roles over the course of the pandemic. Aside from their traditional services of providing expertise construction knowledge and creative design work, architects increasingly took on the role of community agents for underserved neighborhoods in need of help.