CHARBONNEAU – Money for public transit could be better spent elsewhere

EQUALITY, NOT DENSITY is responsible for the spread of COVID-19, says UBC Professor of Architecture Patrick Condon.

“The issue of transfer of this disease doesn’t seem to be density itself, it tends to be the inequalities that are associated with living in a major metropolitan area … both in terms of the jobs that [poorer] people are working and the additional need they have to use public transit to get around,” he told CBC Radio’s Spark (April 24, 2020).

In New York, for example, the hardest-hit neighbourhoods were not wealthy Manhattan but poorer boroughs like Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. In Canada, condo buildings in central Toronto or Vancouver aren’t COVID-19 hotspots because the people who occupy these higher-end rentals have the “luxury of jobs that can be done from home,” says Professor Condon.

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David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.