ABSTRACT
In May 2020, the New York City (NYC) Mayor’s Office of Climate Resiliency (MOCR) began convening bi-weekly discussions, called the Rapid Research and Assessment (RRA) Series, between City staff and external experts in science, policy, design, engineering, communications, and planning. The goal was to rapidly develop authoritative, actionable information to help integrate resiliency into the City’s COVID response efforts. The situation in NYC is not uncommon. Extreme events often require government officials, practitioners, and citizens to call upon multiple forms of scientific and technical assistance from rapid data collection to expert elicitation, each spanning more or less involved engagement. We compare the RRA to similar rapid assessment efforts and reflect on the nature of the RRA and similar efforts to exchange and co-produce knowledge. The RRA took up topics on social cohesion, risk communication, resilient and healthy buildings, and engagement, in many cases strengthening confidence in what was already known but also refining the existing knowledge in ways that can be helpful as the pandemic unfolds. Researchers also learned from each other ways to be supportive of the City of New York and MOCR in the future. The RRA network will continue to deepen, continue to co-produce actionable climate knowledge, and continue to value organizational sensemaking as a usable climate service, particularly in highly uncertain times. Given the complex, rare, and, in many cases, unfamiliar context of COVID-19, we argue that organizational sensemaking is a usable climate service.
ABSTRACT
Urban green spaces (UGS) provide health benefits to city dwellers, which may be even more important during times of crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, lack of access to UGS or important features of UGS, in addition to concerns about UGS safety or maintenance, could prevent people from receiving these benefits. We designed an online survey to understand how people were using and perceiving UGS during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City during the spring of 2020. The survey included questions about how people's visits to UGS and perceptions of the importance of UGS for their health had changed since the start of the pandemic, as well as the concerns people had and features of UGS they considered important. Of the 1372 people who took the survey, most respondents were concerned about a lack of social distancing and crowded UGS, and respondents with these concerns were less likely to visit UGS and had visited UGS less often during than before the pandemic. In addition, generalized linear models showed differences in some concerns and important features of UGS across gender, race and ethnicity, demonstrating the importance of considering specific community needs in UGS design and management. Although concerns about lack of access were not common in our study population, these also appeared to prevent people from using UGS, and were more common in certain areas of the city that were also hard-hit by COVID-19 in the beginning of the pandemic. To ensure that people can get health benefits from UGS during times of crisis, cities must eliminate barriers by providing equitable access to UGS, considering what amenities communities need from UGS, and provide consistent communication about public health policies.
ABSTRACT
We examine the uneven social and spatial distributions of COVID-19 and their relationships with indicators of social vulnerability in the U.S. epicenter, New York City (NYC). As of July 17th, 2020, NYC, despite having only 2.5% of the U.S. population, has ∼6% of all confirmed cases, and ∼16% of all deaths, making it a key learning ground for the social dynamics of the disease. Our analysis focuses on the multiple potential social, economic, and demographic drivers of disproportionate impacts in COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as population rates of testing. Findings show that immediate impacts of COVID-19 largely fall along lines of race and class. Indicators of poverty, race, disability, language isolation, rent burden, unemployment, lack of health insurance, and housing crowding all significantly drive spatial patterns in prevalence of COVID-19 testing, confirmed cases, death rates, and severity. Income in particular has a consistent negative relationship with rates of death and disease severity. The largest differences in social vulnerability indicators are also driven by populations of people of color, poverty, housing crowding, and rates of disability. Results highlight the need for targeted responses to address injustice of COVID-19 cases and deaths, importance of recovery strategies that account for differential vulnerability, and provide an analytical approach for advancing research to examine potential similar injustice of COVID-19 in other U.S. cities.Significance Statement Communities around the world have variable success in mitigating the social impacts of COVID-19, with many urban areas being hit particularly hard. Analysis of social vulnerability to COVID-19 in the NYC, the U.S. national epicenter, shows strongly disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on low income populations and communities of color. Results highlight the class and racial inequities of the coronavirus pandemic in NYC, and the need to unpack the drivers of social vulnerability. To that aim, we provide a replicable framework for examining patterns of uneven social vulnerability to COVID-19- using publicly available data which can be readily applied in other study regions, especially within the U.S.A. This study is important to inform public and policy debate over strategies for short- and long-term responses that address the injustice of disproportionate impacts of COVID-19. Although similar studies examining social vulnerability and equity dimensions of the COVID-19 outbreak in cities across the U.S. have been conducted (Cordes and Castro 2020,Kim and Bostwick 2002,Gaynor and Wilson 2020;Wang et al. 2020;Choi and Unwin 2020), this study provides a more comprehensive analysis in NYC that extends previous contributions to use the highest resolution spatial units for data aggregation (ZCTAs). We also include mortality and severity rates as key indicators and provide a replicable framework that draws from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability indicators for communities in NYC.