The further threat is that the pandemic becomes a rallying cry to maintain our sprawling fortress neighborhoods designed to foster exclusion rather than inclusion. We have an obligation to ignore the short-term reactionary impulse to blame density for the spread of the coronavirus and instead use this opportunity to rethink the policies that impede the construction of new housing, at more price levels, in the places where housing is most needed. — The New York Times
Writing in an Op-Ed published by The New York Times, Carol Galante, professor in affordable housing and urban policy and faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California Berkeley, makes the case for reinvigorating American approaches to affordable housing and urban density in a post-pandemic world.
Galante argues that instead of viewing density as an condition that fuels the spread of disease, the close proximity of goods, services, and people created by urban life, if guided by economic diversity, can actually help societies make it through troubled times.
Galante writes, "This pandemic is reminding us that we need communities where teachers, child- and elder-care workers, nurses, doctors, janitors, construction workers, baristas, tech executives and engineers all share in the prosperity and the comfort of an affordable home."
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