The Berlin Files #70: creative classing
The future of cities, along with much more on hopeful signals, quarantine life, and radical transformations.
Hey everybody. Eric here as always. Each week, I've been trying to do a little deep dive into a specific part of everyday life that is being transformed in some fundamental way by the pandemic and how society is responding to it. This week it's the future of cities, along with much more on vaccine and prevention progress, the return of Hollywood productions, and as always some fun stuff squeezed in as well.
If you're enjoying, I really hope you'll consider helping to spread the word by sharing this newsletter and/or forwarding to a few friends. Thanks!
Hopeful Signals, Quarantine Life, & Radical Transformations
The Future Of... Cities
Photo by Rikki Chan on Unsplash
I've followed writer Richard Florida's work for some time. In The Rise of the Creative Class, he covers the revitalization of cities in the U.S., driven in large part by the notion of a "creative class" of people that includes artists, young professionals, and knowledge-based workers. While "big draws" for cities in post-World War II America included things like sports stadiums, convention centers, and easy access by car from suburban homes to downtown offices, the creative class wanted to live in the cities themselves, and particularly those with cheap rent, walkable and vibrant neighborhoods, and fellow creative class-ers to meet and socialize with.
Over a period of decades, this movement helped to reverse the trend of urban flight and decay in many cities and reshaped the notion of what the American Dream might look like for many.
Cut to 2020 and there's debate going on about what the post-pandemic world will mean for cities. Here's a good example:
I don't think we'll know the answer to this for a long time, but I suspect that Josh's speculation is mostly overblown. Instead, I can see a number of additional things driven by current trends.
The rise of remote work for many will give knowledge workers more freedom than ever in choosing where to live. While some will wish to live in an idyllic small town, I suspect that many will want to continue to live in cities for the reasons listed above. That being said, while many knowledge workers today are "forced" to congregate in expensive, dense cities like San Francisco, Boston, and New York, it's reasonable that a future state might include a huge spectrum of smaller and more livable cities in which creative classers choose to call their own: Sarasota FL, Ithaca NY, Bellingham WA just to name a few potential examples.
Part of livable means cheaper. And another part of it will mean that young people will still want to live in fun places with fellow youngs. And thus the cycle continues, even if it's with a bevy of social distancing and safety precautions that we are just seeing the first signs of today.
Don't forget of course that many industries -- such as healthcare, education, law enforcement, government, and sanitation -- are going to be largely immune from the remote work movement so their mobility will be far more limited.
If and hopefully when we do see the development and wide distribution of a successful vaccine, will everything go back to something close to the "normal" of 2019, or more likely will some new and unexpected trend for cities take shape?
Vaccine & Prevention Progress
The current prognosis on the best and easiest way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is very simple: wear a mask. Here's the nitty gritty:
The study found that if people wear masks whenever they are in public it is twice as effective at reducing the R value than if masks are only worn after symptoms appear.
In all scenarios the study looked at, routine face mask use by 50% or more of the population reduced COVID-19 spread to an R of less than 1.0, flattening future disease waves and allowing for less stringent lockdowns.
Vietnam's story with regard to coronavirus is very unusual and worth checking out. In short, a combination of a fast acting (and oppressive) communist government, existing abilities to contact trace citizens (see: oppressive government), and economic progress fueled by foreign companies like Apple heavily investing in the country have allowed Vietnam to record zero coronavirus deaths to date while still maintaining a relatively rosy economic outlook.
I'm immensely proud of my old friend, materials scientist Luis Estevez (also known as Lou, Captain Lou, GWAR, and other names that I can't legally publish in some outlying jurisdictions), for winning a tech pitch competition in Dayton, Ohio for the work that his start-up, AIMM, is developing: "a self-disinfecting N95 respirator mask, an innovative upgrade to the masks that are vital to the fight against COVID19."
Lots of other interesting tid bits of vaccine news this past week. Here's a few examples from Norbert Elekes, who is all over pandemic coverage on Twitter.
Finally, there's a fine line (I guess?) between a surveillance state and employing effective measures to monitor and track human movement and the effectiveness of safety measures taken to prevent the spread of disease. So, that being said, I give you this:
Airspace Systems, a California startup company that makes drones that can hunt down and capture other drones, on Thursday released new software for monitoring social distancing and face-mask wearing from the air.
Quarantining
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and recent Super Bowl winner Patrick Mahomes enjoys residing in his palace of shoes.
Might Pickleball become the new sports craze coming out of the quarantine?
Answer: probably not, but you never know!
And I'll just leave you with this.
The Return Of...Hollywood
Whenever I see a TV show episode or movie that I'm not already familiar with, my brain instantly goes to work in trying to classify it to a time and place. So that's to say I think we're all going to be on the look out for the first scripted productions that were produced in the post-pandemic world. From a content perspective, that will of course mean how stories and characters that take place "now" deal with things (and I imagine some will handle it exceptionally well while many others will struggle with it).
But there's going to be a lot of other aspects about the way TV shows and movies look and feel that are going to feel different for some time to come. This will include everything from how people are physically spaced, to how fighting and romantic scenes are handled, to the way crowds of people are deployed.
With Hollywood "going back to work" this week, studios are scrambling to figure out what all of this will mean.
Interesting follow-up in how the NBA is planning to safely resume its season at the end of July within a "sports bubble" at a Disney complex in Orlando, Florida:
Not all teams will arrive in Orlando at the same time. Arrival times will be staggered to reduce the risk of infection. The exact dates and times are still to be determined, but all teams are tentatively scheduled to arrive between July 7 and 9. Upon arrival, all team members will be tested and then could be quarantined in their rooms for 36 hours. Daily testing will follow the quarantine period. The league is exploring the use of a saliva mouth swab to replace the uncomfortable deep-nasal swab often used for the coronavirus.
The Reopening
Even with all of the challenges that lie ahead, this week marks a major milestone in the resumption of normal life in New York City:
One hundred days after recording its first coronavirus case, New York City today took its first steps toward reopening.
The Music Club
More quarantine rock for you this week, with Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day fame covering Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" with the help of his kids on bass and drums.
Couple of side notes on this. I lived in San Francisco's East Bay for a stretch earlier in this century. My first apartment in Berkeley was very close to the fabled 924 Gilman punk club, where legendary bands such as Green Day and Operation Ivy were said to have gotten their start in playing live shows. I was also once told by a woman who cut my hair that she had also cut Billie Joe's once upon a time. She seemed very proud about that.
And here's a Music Club bonus for you.
The Comedy Club
I'm a huge Flight of the Conchords fan, and was lucky enough to catch the New Zealanders live at The Greek in Los Angeles some years back. Here's "Hipopopotamus vs. Ryhmenoseros," "one of their gangster-folk crossovers," which gives you a pretty good flavor of what they bring to the table.
Election 2020
Good Biden v. Trump reads:
Great sum up from Nate Cohn:
Veepstakes:
Climate Watch
Tweets of the Week
It's a Wrap!
You made it. Now get back to getting creative.
Also:
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And one last time…