Jacobs’ views on the importance of healthy living remain valid, as recent studies have demonstrated. One such study found that reduced social interaction (in part as a result of COVID restrictions) has increased feelings of loneliness and the risk of stroke, heart disease, and premature death.[ii] In response, cities in some countries are pursuing policies that boost density and promote social cohesion.[iii] Making a city age-friendly can include things like improving intersections by adding longer crossing times and replacing curbs with gradual slopes. High density developments help to bring people of all ages together at a lower cost for infrastructure and maintenance than the all too common sprawl development. Providing age-friendly housing that is close to social services and city amenities makes residents more independent.
It is more than 60 years since Jacobs put forth her views and yet we continue to face obstacles and outdated thinking. The NIMBY syndrome blocks zoning changes that would allow for higher density development and mixed use neighbourhoods. Governments still build or extend expressways that bisect neighbourhoods, encourage sprawl, and harm the environment. Ontario Premier Doug Ford exemplifies this type of backward behaviour in numerous ways.
Ironically, several years of COVID restrictions may prompt changes that help to move us closer to the kind of mixed use, neighbourhood-focused development pattern promoted by Jacobs. We have discovered that employees can work from home productively and there is no need to have everyone return to the office five days a week. Indeed, the recent federal agreement that ended a widespread public service strike includes work from home provisions. If these new working arrangements are increasingly adopted, there are numerous potential benefits. Less commuter traffic obviously eases congestion and reduces adverse environmental impacts. A surplus of office space is a likely result and that presents an opportunity to convert this space into shops, restaurants, even housing units – thereby creating the kind of mixed-use and self-sufficient neighbourhoods that Jacobs described and promoted so long ago.
[i] Numerous editions of Local Government in Canada.
[ii] https://www.governing.com/daily-digit/30-percent-loneliness-premature-death?
[iii] How cities worldwide are planning for an aging population - The Globe and Mail