How Architecture is Exacerbating the Coronavirus Crisis for Minorities and Black Americans
Date Posted: April 14, 2020
Posted In: COVID-19 UPDATES, Discussion,
From The Architect’s Newspaper: While the coronavirus pandemic continues to pummel the entire country, it is hitting certain populations harder than others, particularly black, Latino, and Native American people. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that the CDC released its first national data tracking race among COVID-19 patients, which showed that in March, “the percentage of black [hospitalized COVID-19] patients (33 percent) was much higher than the percentage of African-Americans in the population as a whole.”
Local data from cities and states tracking race among COVID-19 patients showed that the health disparity is even worse in certain areas:
- In Louisiana, about 70 percent of the people who have died are black, though only a third of that state’s population is;
- “African-Americans account for…72 percent of virus-related fatalities in Chicago, even though they make up a little less than a third of the population,” according to the Times; the virus has killed more people in the Navajo nation than in the much larger state of New Mexico;
- and, as of Thursday (Apr. 9), all the people who have died in St. Louis so far from COVID-19 complications have been black.
Why is this the case?
The answer could have something to do with architecture, particularly housing. According to public health experts, while other factors, like implicit bias in healthcare and higher rates of heart disease and diabetes, certainly play a role in the racial coronavirus disparities, crowded housing in low-income neighborhoods could be facilitating the spread of the disease and increasing “weathering,” or the wear and tear of environmental stresses on the body, which increases the severity of coronavirus cases.
Urban design inequities also almost certainly play a role in transmission—even with social distancing rules in full effect, subway stations in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods in the Bronx in New York City are packed with commuting essential workers.
“COVID-19 has been a magnifying glass on the weaknesses in our systems,” said Kimberly Dowdell, principal at HOK and president of the National Organization for Minority Architects (NOMA). Though racialized housing disparities are nothing new, the stark death toll of the pandemic is harshly illustrating those disparities’ effects.