The Coronavirus Shows It’s Time To Remake The American City

[JManc]

Crawford is right; this is a temporary situation. I'm not selling my shares of Uber or Lyft over this.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by The North One

The problem isn't really cars themselves, it's urban planning.

Yep. A lot of people in Japan have cars. Hell, a lot of people in Tokyo have cars. The key is to provide a good alternative to cars for most trips. Period.

^ the existence of cars is not the problem—they're useful tools—but the proliferation of and dependence on cars most certainly is. and it's not just a matter of urban planning, it's a capitalism problem. an economy based on perpetual growth means fabricating need for shit that people wouldn't otherwise need and destroying everything in the process.

[memph]

Originally Posted by softee

Density doesn't seem to always be the deciding factor when it comes to transmission of the virus, Toronto is far more dense than Buffalo (Erie County), but Erie County's per capita caseload is well ahead of the City of Toronto's.

High public transit usage is also mentioned as the best way to quickly spreading the virus, and perhaps that was the biggest factor in community transmission in cities like Toronto and NYC, but that doesn't explain Erie County's numbers when compared to Toronto, or Detroit's, which got hit especially hard. Poverty, poor diet and lack of access to healthcare might explain the discrepancy between Toronto and its neighbouring American cities.

Yeah, there's many reasons why cases might be higher in some small cities than others. Maybe the small city is closer/more connected to a big city with a large outbreak. I suspect that's what happened with Hartford, Scranton and Hartford near NYC, or Houma, Baton Rouge and Lafayette near New Orleans.

Maybe they're in an area that was late to implement measures to control the spread.

Or maybe they just got unlucky, like the small city of Albany, GA where a person showed up at a funeral and infected a bunch of people who passed it on to more people during later funerals, weddings, masses, parties, etc... back when people didn't think covid was present outside of Italy and maybe Seattle and California.

Or you have those cases in the heartland in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, etc where a person shows up sick at a meat-packing plant and next thing you know hundreds of employees are sick and passing it on to their families and beyond.

There were also some very hard hit areas in ski communities like Vale, CO and Sun Valley, ID where maybe someone was taking dozens of rides on those ski lift gondolas passing it on to everyone in it, and then passing it on to a bunch more people in the chalet's dining area, restrooms, etc.

There's also been some really bad outbreaks in prisons, with hundreds, or even up to 2000 infected in a single facility, and a lot of those are in rural areas and small cities, but could still spread to the community through prison workers and visitors.


There's actually many cases where the urban county has fewer deaths per capita than the suburban or exurban counties, or nearby small cities, despite the fact that urban counties tend to have more African Americans who seem to be higher risk.


Examples

Denver: the Fort Morgan and Greeley areas are worse hit than the city of Denver

San Francisco: Marin, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara are worse hit than the city of San Francisco

Cleveland: Cuyahoga County has lower deaths per capita than the outer suburban counties and smaller metro areas of NE Ohio.

Manhattan: hard hit for sure, but the other four boroughs all have even higher death rates. So does Essex County (Newark). Many of the suburban counties are comparable to Manhattan.

Albany, GA: We can start with the fact that SW Georgia around Albany is much harder hit than the state's big city, but a lot of the small rural counties surrounding Albany are even harder hit than the city/Dougherty County.

Mississippi: Jackson is one of the least hard hit parts of the state per capita

Richmond, VA: pretty much every single suburban county has higher death rates than the city proper

Philadelphia: again, significantly higher death rates in most of the suburban counties than in the city

Nationwide: most of the worst hit micro/metro areas are small cities

Metro areas with highest % of the entire population (infected or otherwise) killed

New York City: 0.1065%
Greensburg: 0.0896%
Albany, GA: 0.0876%
Bridgeport-Stamford: 0.0825%
Americus: 0.0715%
Fort Morgan: 0.0700%
Hartford: 0.0689%
Thomaston: 0.0687%
Detroit: 0.0657%
Trenton: 0.0646%
New Haven: 0.0625%
New Orleans: 0.0608%
Springfield, MA: 0.0605%
Boston: 0.0560%
Opelousas: 0.0507%

Metro/Micropolitan areas with highest % of population confirmed infected

Worthington, MN: 4.100%
Marion, OH: 3.497%
Logansport, IN: 3.214%
Liberal, KS: 2.475%
Dodge City, KS: 2.266%
Lexington, NE: 2.050%
Dumas, TX: 1.662%
Gallup, NM: 1.500%
Grand Island, NE: 1.406%
Marshalltown, IA: 1.338%
New York City, NY-NJ: 1.335%
Fort Morgan, CO: 1.327%
Sterling, CO: 1.301%
Garden City, KS: 1.265%
Sioux City, IA-NE-SD: 1.217%
Pine Bluff, AR: 1.054%

[iheartthed]

Cuomo's press conference today just released data on habits of people hospitalized. A larger percentage of the hospitalized commuted primarily by personal vehicle than public transit. That has humongous implications for how the virus is transmitted.

[streetscaper]

^^might still be the case that asymptomatic family members are taking the subway and bringing it to a vulnerable (older, predisposed) population sitting at home that will need hospitalization once infected