(2021-02-11) The Pandemic Emptied Europes Cities; What Will Bring People Back?

The Pandemic Emptied Europe’s Cities. What Will Bring People Back? City life came to a standstill from London to Berlin when the coronavirus struck. Now worries of a lasting exodus are pushing urban authorities to address long-festering problems.

When the coronavirus exploded across Europe in March, it realigned city life, shifting office workers to their homes, shuttering the hospitality sector and reshuffling life for millions.

Unshackled from offices — many for the first time in their working lives — city dwellers throughout Europe began to leave, some to avoid the virus but others to to escape cramped and pricey apartments and to connect more with the natural world.

the easy assumption that most of the coronavirus exiles would naturally return once the virus was tamed is being questioned

For city planners and urban design experts, that means beginning to grapple with problems that have long plagued many of these cities — housing affordability, safe transportation and access to green space — but that have grown more urgent because of the pandemic.

London officials began a “Streetspace” project last year, creating temporary bike lanes and widening pedestrian zones as commuters tried to avoid the dangers of crowded subways and buses. Paris and Barcelona have taken similar steps.

Changes like these, which typically would take years, are being made practically overnight

“There is an opportunity” as the pandemic fades from view, to “introduce new behaviors,” she said.

There is a strong view among social scientists and economists that the pandemic has only accelerated changes already underway in cities, deepening a so-called “doughnut effect” in which high prices drive residents to the outskirts and turbocharging a formerly meandering trend toward remote work.

Paris, which was losing residents even before the pandemic... When the pandemic created a new urgency, Paris quickly turned the Rue de Rivoli, a main thoroughfare, into a multilane biking highway, cut traffic near schools to improve air quality and turned parking spaces into extended cafe seating.