There's a paradox rarely considered, at least in normal times, by those experiencing the delight and wonder that the world's cities have to offer: the serene oasis of a Shinto shrine nestled in a Tokyo back alley, boats plying the canals of Suzhou, the buzzing honeycomb of Marrakesh's medina, or jazz melodies wafting from a French Quarter courtyard. The habitat our ancestors crafted for themselves over generations was not only adapted to their practical and psychological needs in all sorts of ways that we modern humans are just beginning to relearn. The art of city-building also produced places of sublime beauty, harmony, and grace.

And yet here is the paradox: it is also true that, for the vast majority of human history, cities have been relatively miserable places to live. They've often been dirty, smelly, chaotic, and unsanitary, despite our best efforts to make them otherwise.

We're now in the latest engagement in a million-year war between humans and harmful microbes. We're equipped in this fight with a high-tech arsenal that even our grandparents could scarcely have imagined. And an infrastructure that our great-great grandparents, at the least, would have found miraculous: in much of the world, access to modern sewer systems, soap and clean water on demand, and adequately ventilated buildings are nearly universal.

Humans who had none of these advantages have been inhabiting cities for thousands of years, despite the obvious downsides of disease and pollution. It's going to be important in the coming times to reflect and remember why.

No, this crisis hasn't rendered urbanism obsolete. Neither did the last one and neither will the next one.

“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.” -Thomas Jefferson

People are generally bad at holding two contradictory or dissonant ideas in mind at the same time. The overwhelming advantages of rubbing shoulders with each other, and the occasional deadly risk of doing so, are two such ideas.

This helps explain why a tendency with deep roots in American culture (see Jefferson’s quote above) bubbles up at times of crisis: the notion that we would all be safer and better off if we dispersed to live more apart from each other. America’s earliest efforts at suburbanization were fueled by (and the modern urban planning profession arose fairly directly from) the sanitary reform movement of the late 19th century, a response to overcrowding and poor sanitation in industrializing cities. Many of the first zoning ordinances were written to ensure access to fresh air and sunlight. The conditions in which immigrants in Lower East Side tenements lived at the time are unimaginable in wealthy countries today, and—it's important to understand—have nothing in common with a modern "high density" skyscraper.

At the height of the Cold War, facing the specter of nuclear attack, some U.S. planners argued very seriously for dispersal of the populations of large cities into newly-built suburbs, to be connected by new networks of criss-crossing freeways. While I don't subscribe to the idea that this was a main driving force behind suburbanization (there were several), the belief that compact, walkable cities were too great a security risk to be allowed to continue was certainly one you could espouse in serious intellectual circles.

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I'm seeing similar thoughts bubble up again. One Strong Towns reader wrote to us to ask the following question:

I want the discussion to take an entirely different turn. A Washington Post reporter points out that our experience with coronavirus may vary from that of many other countries because we are already "socially distanced" from each other in our single-family homes, giant-aisled superstores, etc. In many ways this is the car-friendly, pedestrian-hostile scenario that Strong Towns finds makes "weak towns." Is it possible that one of the setbacks of the pandemic will in fact be our own movement? The very activities that make our communities "weak" in financial terms may make them "strong" in terms of slowing down a pandemic.

I have two answers to this: a simpler one rooted in the epidemiology of this disease, and another based upon a more general observation of what cities do for us.

My simple answer is no. This writer's suggestion, to me, is easily dispelled by a look at the countries that appear to have best kept the outbreak in check: South Korea. Taiwan. Singapore. All three are known for extreme urban density and high-rise living. Meanwhile, the US, with its auto-oriented suburbia, and Italy, with its narrow streets and piazzas and legendary strolling culture, so far appear to be on very similar exponential trajectories: