The Year We Were Moved
In 2020, we lost our path. To find it again we had to see the world differently. A reflection on the moment when we began to see the world anew.
I remember the day things shifted for me. It was a crisp, early spring day: the kind where the sun (ever an early riser) has emerged from its slumber before the trees yawn and extend their leaves. Patches of ice hid in the shadows, clinging to the last remnants of what had been, by most accounts, a brutal winter.
It wasn’t a long one — but it found a society unprepared to grapple with its human reality. The pandemic had by now claimed 500,000 lives. The economic fallout forced many into the streets, both to sleep and to march.
But for those who never left the street — those who trudged through the snow and wind to the #71 bus (only to transfer to the 83) and walk another mile to work — the same things that were always tough became harder. When the federal aid package ran out, buses ran less often, starved of fare revenue. The buses that did run moved more slowly, trudging through traffic that resulted from richer folks flooding back to their personal automobiles.
Some stops where riders would await delayed buses were outfitted with heaters — but mostly these were directed to the restaurants that spilled out into the streets. The T also distorted some calls to action, introducing arm rests on the benches in the stations in the name of ‘accessibility’ for seniors who were barely riding the T anyways. Never mind the houseless folks who needed a place to sleep.
The Universal Housing Benefit that the new government rolled out in January wasn’t so universal after all. The folks who had made their home on the sidewalk for years were pushed aside; cut in line by those resourced folks (‘everyday’ people) who had the connections to work the system. New public apartments went to the newly houseless — an acute response to the pandemic, which left those who had made their lives in the street to fend for themselves.
The first doses of the COVID vaccine had just begun to arrive. When scientists first announced a break-through in January, the world breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Journalists commended them. Medals were handed out. A cure for one disease, however, was no balm for the inequality and racism that had infected the United States for much longer.
It had been decided that ‘essential workers’ would receive the vaccine first. With the economy growing again, the definition of ‘essential’ had shrunk. Grocery clerks, delivery people, and housekeepers were deemed indispensable in the early days of the pandemic — but now, having risked their own safety to keep the country alive — they were asked to step aside.
4:02 pm, seven minutes before the Number 1 bus would arrive.
I let out a long sigh and glanced at my watch. 4:02 pm, seven minutes before the Number 1 would arrive.
I reached for the folded newspaper in my bag. Exhausted by Zoom calls, I had rediscovered my love of hard copy. Today’s top headlines read: Dr. Fauci Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom. Below the fold, Black communities demand fair vaccine access. On the inner fold, Red Sox plan for season-opener in April, and 10 spring recipes that the family will love.”
I mentally bookmarked the vaccine article, tucked away the newspaper, and leaned into the street looking for the bus.
I could write the article in my mind. “CDC Director cautions that vaccine will take a long time to get out. Black and Latino communities have borne the brunt of the virus, and still have less access to health care than white folks. Government asks for patience.”
Patience. What a thing we have always demanded of communities that have never been provided what they deserved.
An older man took up residence beside me at the stop. Whistling softly, he pulled out a pocket watch out of his tweed jacket. The chill in the air numbed my sense of smell — though the faded herringbone told me that his office smelled of sunshine and dust. A professor, perhaps.
I bent further into the street, straining my eyes as if to make contact with a distant driver, and implore them to move it. It’s been a long enough winter and I’m tired of waiting here. With a splat, my newspaper spills onto the sidewalk — along with my coffee.
Shit.
Just as I bend over to collect the pages, now blowing wildly about the sidewalk, the electric bus hums up to the stop and sharply exhales, unfurling its doors. The professor fetches my coffee mug and hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I answer sheepishly.
“Don’t sweat it. Happens to the best of us.” The newspaper, by now, is soaked in coffee and slush.
“Sorry about your paper.”
“Ah, it’s OK. I’ve had enough of the news anyways.”
The bus driver has finished loading its other passengers, and put the wheelchair ramp back in its slot. I make eye contact with her, thank her, and slide a few dollars under the protective barrier. The fares never came back after they were canceled during the pandemic, but I still owe her.
I shuffle my way to the middle of the bus; with fewer passengers aboard, seats are easier to come by. As the bus grunts and screeches into motion, I look out the window. The city looks bare — but the first leaves are emerging, gingerly. It’s late March now, and the river is running high. Maybe I’ll run when I get home, too.
The bus slides to a halt at a corner where one of my favorite coffee shops used to be. ‘For Sale,’ reads a sign in the bay window, where I once spent an afternoon buried in People Before Highways. That French Roast was pretty good, as I recall. I wonder if I’ll ever get to do that aga—
A hand on my shoulder interrupts my thought. The professor leans over with a book in hand. The black cover, worn matte and smooth, is impressed with gold letters: What Moves Us?
“Y’know, I’ve been looking for a little free library to stash it in. You might like it.”
“Oh, uh — thanks! Are you sure?”
The professor glances over me — my tattered book bag, the bags under my eyes — and nods knowingly. “I always find something new in it.”
Before I can ask questions, the professor is off. Left on my own again, I flip through the pages, and land on the epitaph:
“Through daily mobility, we socialise or seek solitude, negotiate our identity and perform a range of social roles; through mobility we may contest power relationships and claim our rights to participate in society or may be excluded and ignored.”
The bus exhales again. So do I.
I wonder often about that moment, how it felt.
2020 was a moment of uncertainty. The pandemic and social unrest blurred the contours of the world that were once sharp and clear — or so I had thought. Historians told us that we had been in such a place before — and that we would emerge again. Stronger, they said. But 2020 felt different. We were accustomed to hurtling through space together — bound, if not by our collective experience, then by our shared fate.
This time we were adrift; lone travelers clinging to shards of driftwood. Having lost our path in the universe, we looked for a new path on Earth. We sought new ways of moving through our cities, which had once been constructed, like Perinthia, to align with the stars. Big data and machine learning would divine the future, we were fold — they would be the Solution. But when we looked up at the night sky, we saw that stars we knew before had shifted, too, ever so slightly.
One thing we knew for sure, maybe the only thing, was that we were in motion.
In 2020 we began, by necessity, to change our way of looking. Instead of seeking our old celestial way points, we turned our gaze to the stars we could see. They had always been there, in fact. But with a whole sky before us, we navigated only by Polaris and Ursa Major. We could not see what was in plain view.
The problem of mobility was not where we moved. It was how we moved. How we were able to move. How we were treated when we moved.
Who we became when we moved — who we could become. And instead of asking “Where do we go?.” We started asking “how do we go?”
2020 showed that ‘open streets’ weren’t open for everyone. Safety was not only about the infrastructure, but the culture that inhabited it. It was about power. No bike lane would have saved George Floyd. And the buses shutting down didn’t stop the protestors from making their voice heard.
After a season of struggle, we began to think differently. We understood that salvation would not come from uncovering a new master plan — a runway, lit up in stars — but rather by seeing the myriad runways before us. The most important mystery was not in the universe — it was in ourselves. Once we started asking the right questions, things came into focus.
We needed to ask “What moves us?”
As the bus rumbled along that day, a new world began to unfurl before me. Gazing out the window, I envisioned physical changes that would make our city easier to navigate. New runways lighting up, for those who previously had to fly in the dark. They had waited long enough.
Dedicated busways, free transit, more greenery, ramps so the people with different abilities could ride the bus, safe sidewalks, electric buses — the possibilities! .
Lighting up at the prospect of these changes, I began to turn over the numbers in my mind. How many bikes can fit in a parking spot? How many more people can move in a dedicated lane by bus, compared with everyone driving? How many more people walk on a street with trees, compared to a barren one?
I looked back down at the book, turned its burlap cover in my hand, and breathed. Maybe the more important idea in our cities was not what they were — after all, I was still on a regular bus — but how they felt.
Movement is joyful. It is liberating. Mobility defines not only the technology we use to get from one point to another. It is how we express ourselves along the way.
Transportation infrastructures are sort of funny that way — both transient and permanent. They are wrought of stone and iron, buried deep in the earth for miles at a time. They are feats of engineering, lasting edifices of human accomplishment. Yet they change every day, as humans move through them. A businessman in cufflinks rubs shoulders with a merchant in shirt sleeves, as a student selects a seat on the bus.
Each day a dance unfolds, with a distinct rhythm but different movements. The mood of a society — its hopes, fears, and fleeting stresses — is encoded in this dance. And as people traverse the same path each day, soon a new path is created. A trail in the hardwood, worn smooth by the bare feet passing over it.
Travel is a form of reinvention, of recording history and creating the future in one fleeting moment. We pass through permanent spaces, leaving traces of ourselves, and taking traces of the environment with us. We gaze out the window of a train, to observe business people bustling to their next obligation — and wonder what lies ahead in our own life.
Watching kids shuffle aboard, we are swept back to a past love, from a different place and time, a different city — but which infuses this one just the same. We stand on the subway platform, nervous — looking around our fellow travelers, wondering if they are shaking in their boots like us. And we share glances with others on bikes, grateful for the sun on our skin and breeze in our hair.
Parts of the future lie in the past. In a way we have no choice but to remember where we have come from. Maybe we got it right long ago. Perhaps cities used to be more human. That perhaps with each footfall, and each pedal of the bike — we were moved. Perhaps, that it is where we are going again.
The form of our cities provides only an outline — a starting point. It is on us to hold space for them to emerge as they could be — as they once were.
Emmett McKinney is a transportation planner and urbanist. He holds a Master in City Planning from MIT, and focuses his work on the intersection of smart cities, equity, and climate change. Prior to MIT, Emmett was a Design Fellow at the Civic Design Center as well as Research Associate at the Environmental Law Institute. In addition to hosting CoLab Radio podcasts, Emmett tells stories through data, design, and writing. Find more of his work in his portfolio and follow him on Twitter.