This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

When Kurt Cole said and I were promoting our book,

the 99% Invisible City last year during the middle of the pandemic,

over and over we were asked how we thought the design of cities might change because of COVID.

And by that point, lots of shorter term changes were already visible, like street closures to accommodate outdoor dining and other open air activities.

That's Kurt. Hey Kurt. Hey Robin.

Also all the plexiglass partitions like they popped up overnight and they're still everywhere in the bay.

I was impressed how the shopkeepers could put them up so fast and fix them in, you know, kind of interesting ways.

But they do kind of diminish the retail experience. Like I have a hard time hearing through or around them

Totally especially when talkers on both sides are also wearing masks. Yeah, I need to lip greed to

understand people most of the time anyway.

So I don't love the plexiglass that could go away as soon as it's safe.

But one thing I do want to keep, actually,

is all the wayfinding cues, the stickers on the floor, like guiding people where to stand to keep socially

distant and keep in line.

I mean I don't want the social distancing to stay but I love adding an information layer

on to the floor you know keeping people online because people are terrible

and knowing where to stand and be in line, it just like soothes my anxiety.

Yeah, absolutely. And I could see keeping some things like sidewalk seating and car-free streets too.

Always assuming that we vet these for impacts on accessibility and the potential privatization of public space.

Of course, that's right. But we're not going to try to predict what designs are going to stick around from our current pandemic. Instead, this week, we're going to look to the past. Kurt and I are going to talk through some of the other designs throughout history that were born out of moments of disaster

And I think some of these examples will really surprise people

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