Fighting Coronavirus: How Can We Protect City Life? | 2

American Innovations

Wondery

Steven Johnson, History, Kids & Family, Education For Kids, Science

4.6 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When public health is threatened on a mass scale, we have a long history of working together to take on the challenge. On this new weekly series, Steven will speak with experts from the worlds of health and technology about how the current moment compares with past pandemics, and what the coming months might look like.

On this episode, Steven talks with Richard Florida, a bestselling author on cities and urban rebirth. The population density of cities has always been key to driving new ideas, new collaborations, and new social movements. But today, as the coronavirus spreads, that density is creating danger. How can cities protect their way of life, and how they can come out of this crisis even stronger than before?

New episodes of “Fighting Coronavirus” will publish here every Tuesday, or you can listen and subscribe at https://wondery.com/shows/fighting-coronavirus/

Read Richard Florida and Steven Pedigo’s 10-Point Preparedness Plan for Cities.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to American Innovations,
0:03.6	Add Free on Amazon Music, download the app today.
0:17.0	From Wondery, I'm Stephen Johnson, and this is Fighting Coronavirus.
0:30.5	Just a few days ago, when I talked to Dr. Bruce Galen for the first episode of this series,
0:43.0	I was recording the conversation from a closet in our Brooklyn apartment.
0:47.5	But now, I'm speaking to you from the basement of a house in rural Virginia.
0:52.5	My wife and I relocated here earlier this week with our kids.
0:56.0	And now we're in the middle of the 14-day quarantine recommended for people who leave New York.
1:01.0	But as a New Yorker, now being somewhere this quiet, this devoid of people, it feels strange.
1:08.0	When we walk our dog along the road, we see maybe three or four people a day driving past us in their cars.
1:14.0	It's reminded me again just how many points of connection City Life creates over the course of an ordinary day.
1:21.0	To friends, neighbors, strangers.
1:25.0	It's been more than a month since I did something as simple as grabbing dinner with old friends,
1:31.0	which seems almost miraculous to me now, like some lost tradition from a banished civilization.
1:37.0	But having people in close proximity to each other isn't just about the emotional connection of sharing physical space with other people,
1:45.0	as delightful as that sounds right now.
1:47.0	Civilization actually needs groups. It needs crowds.
1:51.0	This has actually been a theme running throughout many of my books, that this kind of density drives new ideas, new collaborations, new social movements.
2:01.0	But as we're now seeing, density creates danger as well.
2:07.0	Today on Fighting Coronavirus, we've got the perfect guest to help us wrestle with the questions of what urban life might look like when this is all over.
2:17.0	Richard Florida is one of the world's leading thinkers on City Life.
2:21.0	He's a professor at University of Toronto School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, and a distinguished fellow at NYU and Florida International University.
	...

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