To save restaurants and give homebound families some space, in 2021 "city planners did something that had been unthinkable, or at least undoable. Being outdoors seemed to be far less risky than being in an unventilated indoor space, so leaders started up or expanded nascent programs that converted parking spaces along streets into outdoor dining areas for restaurants, point-of-sale space for shops, and mini-parks—'parklets.' They closed some residential streets to cars so people who lived nearby could have safe access to outside space. It happened all over—Vancouver, San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, Chicago.

"Academics, activists, and interest groups have been trying to make this happen for decades—to take streets away from cars and parking and give them over to anything that wasn’t just 2 tons of steel moving 40 miles an hour. That’s because cars and parking are catastrophes for cities. In the mid to late 20th century, the construction of parking lots and freeways destroyed the downtowns of dozens of American cities and ploughed through or razed nonwhite neighborhoods...." - Adam Rogers

Article: The Pandemic Might Have Redesigned Cities Forever

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