Hearing our Footsteps: Planning in a World on Pause

What happens when traffic stops?

In the past several weeks, a hush has fallen on cities and towns across this country and around the world. Automobile traffic has dropped significantly. Some jurisdictions have restricted or banned cars entirely from certain streets to create more space for social distancing.

In many places, for the first time in living memory, the loudest sound you’re likely to encounter walking on the street is that of your own footsteps.

We’re experiencing, in some ways, what our communities would have been like a century ago. Before the dominance of the car, before the decades of widening asphalt and narrowing sidewalks, it was people who ruled the streets. Our mobility systems were built with them in mind.

This is not to romanticize the present moment. We all hope this terrible pandemic will end as swiftly as possible, and that our neighborhoods will once again hum with the activity of daily life.

What this moment does afford us, however, is a chance to think. About the ways in which life is different with so much traffic off the road: the cleaner air, the reduction in crashes, the enormous expanses of space suddenly available in urban areas. About the kind of future we wish to build—safe, sustainable, equitable—and the policies and designs that could help achieve it.

As we grapple with this seismic event, and plan the world that comes after, our guiding principle should be a radically simple one: people. Amidst enormous uncertainty and strain on our systems and institutions, a back-to-basics approach is essential to ensuring outcomes that truly benefit all of us.

In the coming weeks and months on our blog, our staff will be exploring many dimensions of our work as it intersects with this moment, from response, to recovery, to resilience. Through it all, this focus on the human element will be—as it is in all our work—the constant. We hope you’ll join us in advancing this vital conversation.

Fred Cannizzaro, Senior Communications and Public Relations Specialist, contributed to this post.

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