What's in store for us following COVID-19? The simple answer is we just don’t know. We’re in a time of unprecedented anxiety and uncertainty and rapidly shifting assumptions. Change is happening at so many different systemic levels that normal scenario building is hard and risks being overtaken by events. This is why we’re currently finding it more useful to talk about possible trajectories playing out given the plethora of signals we’re seeing in response to the crisis.
Option one: A disciplined trajectory
One of the trajectories we’re tracking is what we’re calling the disciplined trajectory, in which greater control and surveillance is considered justified to maintain public health and security. If this ethos of control and market-based access prevails, we risk sleepwalking into the erosion of truly public spaces, and more and more barriers to inclusive access. Already it is becoming common to see park benches designed so that homeless people can’t sleep on them. In London, many seemingly public spaces around corporate premises have been privatised, and behaviour in them is monitored by private security. Even community gardens can have bureaucratic complexities in their access policies that exclude many of the people from the community they are supposed to serve. While the pandemic has really exposed the need for easy access to greenspaces for all, it has not curbed the underlying barriers to access.
Option two: What if we transform?
Here is a possible, provocative glimpse from the ‘transform’ trajectory, where rebuilding and reform are centred around regenerative principles and the recognition that planetary health is human health.
It’s 2030 and Nadia is walking through the estate where she lives, reflecting on how much it has changed in the past ten years. The old car park by her block is an orchard now, and the trees have grown tall enough to provide welcome shade in the summer and enough mulberries to turn all the kids’ hands and faces red in August.
She remembers the shock and delight when the vote went through, the unaccustomed feeling that they could actually shape the place they lived in. The car park one block down became a football pitch, and just one remains for the few residents who still own cars. Even that one has shrunk - half of it has been taken over by a five-year old Miyawaki pocket forest with an unbelievable number of trees in it - which is earning them all community carbon credits that top up the community fund.
Green kids corridors link the estate to the local park. Well, they call them kids’ corridors, and children use them no question, but actually those paths are also heaving with young mums and OAPs. They’ve been great for everyone. When they were first introduced people held their breath, fearing a repeat of the ‘cycle-lane wars’ but the participatory voting system was a revelation in determining where to place the green kids corridors. Apparently it's based on the system they use in Taiwan and is configured to help people to find points of agreement rather than discord and get real transparency and power around decisions, even down to where the money goes.
Some extraordinary experiments started happening once people understood the potential participatory voting systems had. There was the Breakers Yard run by some local artists where anyone could go to smash things and let off steam - that was surprisingly popular! The Healing Flowerbeds, the Rewilded Lorry, Bat Towers and Parakeet Perch became so popular on the roof of the empty commercial block across the road that they had to rethink the demolition plan. People still come from all over the city to hand feed the parakeets and hang out in the cafe. Of course not all of the ideas lasted, and things have settled down, but the ethos of communal creativity and wellbeing has bedded in. Planting day in Diaspora Gardens in the local park quickly became a neighbourhood festival. As Ruby next door says, ‘that was the day it became my park!’
Joy Green
