The world sure has changed in the last week or two. In just a few days, all sorts of human behavior, systems, and processes were transformed to deal with the impending pandemic.
Whenever this all passes, things will inevitably return to a new kind of “normal”. Some amount of these new behaviors, system and processes will no doubt stay with us.
Get out your crystal ball and make your predictions. Which of these do you expect to be part of a new post-COVID-19normal?. Which would you like to be? What other things do you expect will have changed?
Social distancing? Distance learning? No Winter Parking Ban? Dedicated shopping times for seniors? Recommended list of supplies to have on hand and stored for emergencies? Neighbors helping neighbors? Handshakes? Working from home? On-line public meetings?
People who are sick/not feeling well/symptomatic will be told to stay at home to avoid getting healthy people infected/sick. Hospitals/Urgent Care’s/Clinicians year round need more ventilators, gloves, masks, face shields, safety glasses, respirators equipment inventory/supplies so that needs to be addressed. People also need to understand social distancing/staying home when sick rather than just showing up to the hospitals, urgent care’s, clinic’s and stuff which gets other people infected/sick. Just basic every day common sense based stuff is what folks need to learn. Washing hands, not sharing food & beverage which also helps to reduce/slow down/eliminate cross contamination/disease. Its basic every day common sense stuff that folks needs to realize. I would love to see more technology/video link use for meetings, conferences, classes, and stuff.
Rethinking some of our misguided bans and policies over the years that have become law. New perspective and priority…
Parking ban
Plastic and paper bag bans – Hmmm, who knew widespread use of reusable bags could be unsanitary and risk spreading disease to owners and workers?
Leaf blowers – Just doesn’t seem all that important any longer.
Push for radical increased density – All of a sudden a little extra open space doesn’t seem so terrible.
-A huge push to for remote work acceptance. Encourage more companies to use it to reduce traffic and lesson the burden of looking for housing close to Boston
– for the next few years, folks will be seeking a little more space rather than density. After being stuck at home for several weeks, a yard and a little more distance from neighbors will again be considered luxuries.
– local retailers will be more appreciated. Many of these small businesses will likely not survive this year. Residents will see how dependent they are on local businesses and shift buying locally to support them.
– people will be a little less selfish and entitled and hopefully will spend less time on facebook after being forced to live online for several weeks
I hope the many companies that never allowed employees to work from home will now embrace the idea’ – even when we’re not under a viral cloud.
I hope the city continues to include, in some form, the ability for the public to take part in public meetings remotely.
I hope my daughter continues with her guitar playing, even when she’s got lot of other free time options.
… and I personally vow to never lick doorknobs … even after the epidemic is over.
Oh good Jerry…I was really concerned that you were going to go back to your door licking ways. 🙂
I have been pondering the whole density issue through the lens of viruses spreading. Also the last thing I would want to do right now is take public transportation. Hopefully we never see anything like this pandemic again. On the bright side maybe we will see more telecommuting and less traffic in the future.
Less density? Isn’t hindsight the greatest equalizer?
Of course, less density will always be preferred by many of those who can afford it, but it is wrong to argue that the U.S. is in crisis because of our density. Far denser countries — Germany, South Korea, Singapore — have handled the public health crisis far better than we have. So, if we are lucky, what will come out of this?
– Policy and expertise will matter again
– Science will drive policy related to public health
– Voters will consider intelligence, honesty, and competence more seriously in candidates
– We’ll have infectious-diseases “moonshot,” resulting in the ability to generate, at scale, a safe, effective vaccine for a new viral threat within 60 days of its emergence
– We”ll treat next-generation-internet like the vital utility that it is, and develop better models for telecommuting
– We will develop models to support hourly and gig-economy workers when they are working and when they are laid off
– A greater appreciation for our small businesses and hopefully more patronage of the ones that survive
– Eliminate the damn parking ban. We barely needed it this winter and they were able to lift it a few weeks early and nobody was worse for the wear.
– Fix our sidewalks. As many of us spend more time walking in our neighborhoods in a socially distancing fashion, I think we’ll discover how many of our sidewalks are in disrepair and inhospitable to wheelchairs and strollers.
– Hopefully increased community events. A lot of the events under Setti’s administration have been eliminated, reduced, or poorly publicized. People will be craving these events. The Heartbreak Hill Race was cancelled this year before COVID-19, the Picnic in the Park events used to happen several times over the summer and they don’t seem to exist anymore, the ice cream party at the end of the summer book challenge.
If people are walking and would like something to do. Safe Routes to School is looking for people to help identify issues with sidewalks. This is something you can do alone, with your partner or your kids. Print the instructions at the link below. Grab a clipboard, a measuring tape & a smart phone. It will get everyone outside and can be done without getting close to other people.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eRydmo9p9jbrH96zw2eD41vzPOh5FSIoAMLRJeS_mCQ/edit#gid=0
Apologies if this posts twice — I tried a few times last night, but it was rejected as spam?? Now the system is saying that I’ve already posted (but it is not showing…) … trying a third time now — is there a new box below that needs filling? We need to fill in the year? (Name/email/website/year)
HEALTHCARE — I hope our thinking on the provision of healthcare will have to change. So many people will become ill — I have to hope that viewing healthcare as a human right will be how we walk out of this catastrophe. (Personally, I don’t think that Medicare for All is the right mechanism to implement it, but those are details that can be figured out.) I hope we come out of this with more kindness and compassion and empathy toward each other.
I’ve become a participant in five radically different kinds of ZOOM meetings that have become fantastic ways of staying in touch with people I can no longer socialize with in public. These weekly sessions will be even better now that I have visual contact with other participants after my friend Bruce Henderson helped set up a camera on my desktop. I sense that these on line meetings as well as more work at home opportunities will be permanent if reduced options when this current crisis passes.
I also hope this will put a strong brake on the constant drumbeat that Federal Government health and environmental regulatory programs or oversight are somehow detrimental to the economic, social even moral welfare of this country. With only brief interruptions during national emergencies, we’ve been hearing this plethora of deceptive lies and half truths since 1968 when Hubert Humphrey lost the Presidency to a combination of the assaults on activist government by both Richard Nixon and George Wallace who railed against “pointy headed bureaucrats” (Wallace) and “overbearing bureaucrats”) (Nixon). It’s hard to mobilize the entire country when a significant portion of the population believes that environmental and public health science and regulations are bogus and part of a deep state conspiracy.
Newton pension obligation is likely in danger zone given the stock market decline.
The mayor will finally have to make some hard decisions which were avoided due to the stock market rally in the last 5 years..
The revenue will have to come from commercial or density.. and its not clear what the appetite for density will be after this. For sure, people will appreciate having a yard after being stuck for months and people will be cautious with public (no crowding) transportation for next few years
Why are we dancing around the “Density” issue? We just voted “Yes”, to radically densify Upper Falls.
One wonders if Northland is reconsidering the marketability of 800 units on top of one another given “social distancing “ is the mantra of the day ?!
Blueprint,
Given the high senior population in Newton, these folks are certainly grateful of the lower density “at this time”
Its difficult to say how long this will linger. Will people shun density and public transportation until its totally eliminated or vaccine is available?
Yes, i’m going to drive into work after this is over(perhaps buy electric to offset environmental impact) until I feel its safe for public transportation again.
Nigel ,
Given the worlds +6 billion people, and the environmental strain that causes the proliferation of viruses we see today, we will continue to see that “density “, will more and more be seen to be problematic.
Thank God the likes of Northlands 800 housing unit development might be brought into question, and praise the lord we still have some space and fresh air left here in Newton !
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I think companies will need to embrace WFH where it is feasible to compete. Suppose you have two competing companies that at their core don’t actually require physical presence to deliver their product or service. One subjects their employees to hours of commuting each week and pays the costs of maintaining downtown office space that’s largely empty at any given time even without WFH. The other has limited or no office space and has employees working productively from home. If the later can maintain worker productivity and customer connections, it will massively outcompete the one wed to brick and mortar.
That’s been happening over time, but this will accelerate it with everyone forced to do the experiment. Organizations will have offices, but less and less will they have a named dedicated desk for each person. People will be in a couple of days a week.
Higher education tipping toward remote will accelerate. Maybe not for the big brand-name schools, but for some, and that will impact the historically education-stabilized resilience of the Boston area housing market along with remote work.
I appreciate that this is an exercise in forward-looking, creative thinking and discussion, and in fact there have been some good posts here. I just think it’s way too early to imagine life in the post-COVID-19 world. It seems like we have far more to endure first, and our perceptions will be shaped not just at the local or regional level but what happens on a national and international scale. Most immediately, though, I feel we need to see not only how Newton’s government addresses needs and situations that arise, but how these play out on a street-by-street, even house-by-house basis. I’d like to think we all will embrace the “we’re-in-this-together” ethos, and I know there have been heartening examples of it shared on social media and other outlets, but as stress and anxiety build, will the less-savory parts of our all-too-human nature become conspicuous?
My guess for the future is that, when we do return to some sort of normalcy in our work, school, family and other routines, there will be a clash of mindsets: One will be, “OK, that was terrible, but it’s all over now, and best thing we can do is to forget about the whole thing and resume life as we knew it”; the other will be, “No, we have to look at how we responded to the crisis, for good and bad, because once we do we’ll see that there is no more ‘life as we knew it.’”
Lots of good stuff here that I agree with but, as always, it has some foolishness mixed in.
I’m hoping that eventually we, all of us, will respect each other on at least a personal level and realize it takes working together to both survive and to resurrect this country – maybe not to exactly what it was but what it could be. It’s become obvious that healthcare is a right either, as I would prefer, just because or so others who can’t afford healthcare won’t infect those who can. I hope our government leaders rethink their partisan selfishness and realize that without communication and cooperation we, as a country, won’t survive. States need to cooperate with other states and national government to prop up those who need it to get by because individuals are what keep this country healthy and economically sound. We need each other.
I’m also hoping that countries will continue to cooperate with one another instead of hating each other.
If we cannot all come together to fight a virus that can infect absolutely everyone, then we will have suffered through this epidemic for naught on the personal level. Otherwise I think Essteess is right that: “there will be a clash of mindsets: One will be, “OK, that was terrible, but it’s all over now, and best thing we can do is to forget about the whole thing and resume life as we knew it”; the other will be, “No, we have to look at how we responded to the crisis, for good and bad, because once we do we’ll see that there is no more ‘life as we knew it.’”
For the life of me, I don’t understand why people want to still hold on to their petty differences during this health crisis and throw density into the conversation not as component of social distancing but as a continuing argument against apartment buildings even those adding green space. Families staying home in apartments is the same as staying home in your house. It’s just a matter of size. To me it signals that maybe the tiny apartment phase may be over.
Just to be clear: I’m not criticizing anyone for trying to imagine how post-pandemic life will be, what issues may or may not be at the forefront, etc. As I mentioned, some of the thoughts expressed about, for example, the future of work-from-home and remote learning, are quite interesting to read.
I just don’t find myself ready to visualize the after-COVID 19 world yet, because I’m trying to come to grips with the one we’ve still got.
Best wishes to all.
@Essteess – Reality is vastly over-rated. I try to avoid it whenever I can 😉
Yes, from our vantage point at the moment, imagining post COVID-19 is a big stretch
@Jerry Reilly — Yeah! What’s reality ever done for us, anyway?
@Marti — I realized after I posted there might be some density implications, which wasn’t the intent at all. More an observation from two weeks of life in zoom as well as a few office relocations in the past few years. I appreciate the general truce here in V14 on the density front. We’ll know we are in the clear when that comes back.
I got this from a co-worker this week from Berklee school of Music. Its a testament to what displaced students can do as well as an anthem for what we all need to do. Apologies if you’ve seen it. Have a good weekend and be well:
https://www.berklee.edu/news/berklee-now/what-world-needs-now-student-made-video
Thanks Jack. That was just the ticket!