Numlock Sunday: Katharine Lusk on the post-pandemic city

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Katharine Lusk, who wrote “City Dwellers Gained More Access to Public Spaces During the Pandemic – Can They Keep It?” for The Conversation. Here's what I wrote about it:

Across the country, municipalities have countered death during a respiratory pandemic by cutting loose on restrictions when it comes to outdoor dining and recreation, taking parking spaces and streets intended for vehicular use and giving them over to restaurants and repurposing them as areas to walk through programs designed to open up spaces for city dwellers. While many of these initial attempts were designed to be temporary, many have high approval and will likely stick around. A survey of 130 mayors of cities found that 92 percent had created new spaces for outdoor dining over the course of the pandemic, and 34 percent planned to make these changes permanent. About 40 percent of mayors said they pursued widening sidewalks and adding new bik…