Do Cities Work Against Us When The Pandemic Comes?

Michael Kimmelman: “Thecoronavirus undermines our most basic ideas about community and, inparticular, urban life. Historians tell us that cities emerged thousandsof years ago for economic and industrial reasons — technological leapsproduced a surplus of agricultural goods, which meant not everyone hadto keep working the land. Still,cities also grew, less tangibly, out of deeply human social andspiritual needs. The very notion of streets, shared housing and publicspaces stemmed from