Most NYCHA buildings lack outdoor space, plus many of the buildings are ageing rapidly, with potentially huge maintenance costs – meaning any solutions need to be creative. “We are looking at strategies that would allow new balconies to perform multiple functions and piggyback on NYCHA maintenance efforts that are already underway,” says Rich.
Nesbitt says changes don’t have to be so radical; even “view corridors” to parks from your home could help. Extra flowers on the street could work, too, because we can’t go to the park every day. “Especially if we’re busy, or a single parent, or low income and we have to work a couple [of] jobs. You’re not going to be in the park five blocks from your house – you will be walking down the street in front of your house, and that contact with nature is important.”
A renewed conversation
Of course, trying to increase access to outdoor space has been a goal of cities way before Covid-19 struck. But the conversation has taken on greater intensity since the pandemic has exposed just how unequal access can be. It’s not yet been possible to quantify the mental-health toll of long weeks of lockdown, and any correlation with access to outdoor space. But we do know that isolation is bad for everyone’s mental health, and that people who lost incomes or had low incomes to begin with experienced more stress. “Covid continues to spotlight where these inequities are and what they look like,” says Burrowes.
Experts hope this will accelerate pre-pandemic trends: a push for more balconies, better community gardens and easier entry points to parks. But this must come from city governments prioritising them. “We can have good housing and good access to nature – not one or the other,” says Nesbitt. “In the pandemic, that relationship with nature is really important.”
Kgama, meanwhile, is finally managing to get some fresh air – in Charlotte, North Carolina. She and her family bought plane tickets for $15 each and will fly down for a weeklong getaway. But she wishes it was even longer. If a second wave of Covid cases hits New York, it’ll mean being cooped up inside for months all over again. “If I could, we would’ve left for the whole summer,” she says.
