COVID-19, ECONOMY, & PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

Students:

Shania Julia Anunciacion, Rebecca Avorkliyah, Corinne Brath, Tony Colavito, Alex Kane, Nolan Kukla, Jared Lane, Zachary Lee, Alessandra Santarosa, Morgan Stewart, Jingyao Wen, Shameeq Willis, Zhitong Wu

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JiYoung Park

Spring 2022

URP582

MUP

Are we now living in a “new normal?”

The impacts of COVID-19 were felt across every industry and affected the daily lives of individuals. Urban planning students in this studio analyzed how the pandemic created significant disruptions in public transportation networks nationwide. Studying three cities – New York City, San Francisco, and Syracuse, NY – yielded comparative cases on the relationship between residents, their occupations, and their commute times to work. The final report produced by students broke down how various population sizes responded to disruptions in public transit. More specifically, it examined the impact of public transit disruptions on the economy and city residents.

The selected cities, and numerous others, have seen a sharp decline in public transportation ridership, directly impacting the revenue generated by fares. As revenue streams are becoming less reliable for transportation authorities, students put together a set of methods and policies to help alleviate the effects of COVID-19 on the economy and residents’ social well-being.

WHY THESE CITIES?

The pandemic and mandatory stayat-home orders exacerbated existing economic disparities of marginalized groups within New York City. Those exempt from the PAUSE Order in NYC included essential workers, as they were needed on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19.

In New York City, the population of essential workers is represented mainly by people of color. By analyzing demographic groups and the industries that employ them, people of color were statistically more likely to work “essential” jobs, leading to a lower capacity to social distance and increased vulnerability to sickness.

San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, saw a 90 percent plummet in ridership during the onset of the pandemic. As a result, access to essentials like food and safe transportation negatively affected lower-income communities and those with disabilities. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority responded with an online map showing the median passenger count per stop at any given time. This aimed to mitigate bus capacity and give people a tool to plan their trips ahead of time.

In contrast to the two previous cities, Syracuse is a city of drivers. Central New York leaders are beginning to adopt the value of a mixed-modal transportation network to address the historically deep-set socioeconomic disparities. Doing so has the ability to attract economically driven Millennials who want walkable cities and cultural amenities.

Upcoming infrastructure projects offer an opportunity to curb currently insufficient networks that have isolated low-income communities spatially and economically. Modifications to Syracuse's major commuter thoroughfares are intended to increase economic development and public green space. With new construction, multiple community groups have emphasized that great care must be taken to ensure ongoing racial disparities in the construction trade are addressed simultaneously.

METHODS & FINDINGS

To gain an accurate picture of the represented cities, students surveyed people from each community and categorized respondents by industry. They found a majority of individuals did not work from home prior to the pandemic. However, a significant shift occurred to an increasing number of people working from home during the pandemic, a result of many policy changes that had the potential to impact some employers’ abilities to have in-person work settings.

A closer look into the spatial distribution of public transportation access in each metropolitan area revealed how urban transit routes, including rail and bus, correlate to industry and income levels. Each city was broken down visually into the following categories: study location, low-income population spatial distribution, train routes, bus route changes from 2019-2020, and commuting time maps from 20192020. Visualizing how marginalized communities relate geographically demonstrated mobility trends before and during the pandemic.

All three cities experienced major changes to their typical bus routes, most commonly by reducing the frequency and the number of available routes. Often due to budget constraints and the need to social distance, ridership declined. Affordable housing units and communities that rely on these networks typically regard public transportation access as highly important in their housing decisions.

To better understand how the pandemic has impacted individuals within each city, students distributed a survey through media outlets. Residents were asked about the industry they work in, their past and current work situation, and their mode(s) of transportation.

Through the quantitative and qualitative data represented, students developed a series of policy recommendations to be considered by a city’s public transportation network in a post-pandemic environment. The first is to improve communication efforts with riders in the hopes that it eases frustration and helps alleviate food insecurity issues. Second, transit authorities must develop comprehensive strategy guides to help mitigate the effects of future disruptions. Lastly, cities should seek alternative solutions to bolster lost revenue rather than increasing ridership fees. This report demonstrated the importance of public transportation for the people who depend it most, lowincome communities.

“This studio was a great opportunity for a group of us students to come together for the first time to research a topic relevant to society."

- Rebecca Avorkliyah

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Greg

Spring 2022

ARC202

BS Arch

How do we design in contexts that are foreign to us? Our neighborhoods, towns, and cities continue evolving, forcing architecture to keep up. Designing architecture to “fit-in” to a specific environment is a framework from the sophomore design studio titled, “Fitting-In.” Second-year architecture students from this studio drew inspiration from a series of neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.

The semester kicked off with a class trip to Pittsburgh to experience firsthand the environments students would be designing in and around. The analysis of proportions, projections, materials, color, and building materials all factored into how students built their understanding of the neighborhoods. When students returned to Buffalo, these observations were used to create a series of ‘building portraits’. The associated assignment was to draw a house as it exists, then apply exaggeration, transplantation, and abstraction transformations to each successive drawing.

This portrait study is designed to help students pick up on any and all peculiarities they discover. What do these minute details say about a neighborhood or the larger community? How can they be reflected through students' varied styles of representation? Students are encouraged to interpret the historical grain of these neighborhoods through the lens of twenty-first century architecture.

Wysocki was drawn to the rich yellow-green color of a house in the Manchester neighborhood. The wearing-away paint inspired the start of the portrait study, where she chose to exaggerate the peeling condition of the paint. Megan then used transplantation as a way to reference a nearby elementary school’s mural by integrating the existing mural onto the façade of her building.

Students learned how a set of values could inspire design decisions rather than a particular style of one individual or context. Understanding the impact these values have on overall form and morphology steered how students interpreted the architectural characteristics of their assigned neighborhood in Pittsburgh.

By building a catalog of architectural representation through the building portraits, students reflected on historical, social, physical, and environmental conditions. This then provided a baseline for students going forward in the semester.

Establishing the portraits and techniques used as a precedent, students designed a library fit for the given community. Wysocki merged two different building typologies, a library, and a greenhouse.

She defined a library as a program that encourages the growth of knowledge by providing resources for learning and research. Greenhouses are designed explicitly as growing environments for plants and living things. In a neighborhood suffering from a stable food source, the greenhouse provided a community garden space for produce and other plants.

Contrasting materials of brick and glass come together to form two distinct buildings with a special alleyway in between, covered by a tree canopy. The material selection, combined with transplanted columns from a nearby neighborhood church, creates a space that encourages involvement and participation from all community members. It was essential to Wysocki for the library design to contextually fit into the neighborhood's fabric, with the hope that, in time, it could become a community landmark.

“In terms of designing in a community like Manchester, it’s incredibly important to see what the community needs, and what they will benefit from.”

- Megan Wysocki