Pandemic brings surprising changes to our urban habits

[Judi Lynn]

November 4, 2024

Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist

People forced to hunker down in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic have retained many of those habits – which might change the face of our cities and urban spaces.

In 2023, people in the US spent about 51 minutes less time on activities outside of the house compared to before the pandemic, a new paper in the Journal of the American Planning Association has found. People also reduced the amount of time spent on daily travel, such as driving or taking public transportation, by 12-minutes compared to 2019.

The authors of the paper, who are urban planners, say: “…even after the pandemic Americans are staying home to a startling degree” and if these patterns of altered behaviour hold “they could imply significant long-term changes for homes, businesses, cities, and transportation.”

The researchers analysed the work and leisure habits of 34,000 adult respondents to the American Time Use Survey in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

More:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/covid/pandemic-brings-surprising-changes-to-our-urban-habits/

[eppur_se_muova]

1. I wonder how much of this is just due to changes in social media, irrespective of the pandemic ?

Granted, the pandemic was a huge forcing factor, but maybe all it did was compress what would have been the next several years of change into only about a year.

"Futurists" for years have been pushing the narrative that virtual presence will abate the need for actual physical presence, particularly when all that is accomplished by transporting people halfway around the world is that they can talk to each other. The earliest attempts to accomplish this by electronic means may have been awkward and even unreliable, but growth is almost always accompanied by growing pains. The state of the art has been constantly improving.

I believe it would be a Very Good Thing if Zoom meetings and the like obviated much of the business travel in the world, greatly reducing the amount of CO2 belched into the air by airliners (to say nothing of particulate pollution). Maybe someday the loss of life in airliner crashes will become a once-a-decade event because airliners just aren't that essential, and forgoing air travel will become easier and easier.