Cities to boost spending on green initiatives after the pandemic

U.S. cities are planning investments to make their communities greener and spur an economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.

In Los Angeles, residents have grown accustomed to walking and biking on their streets and dining on sidewalks with fewer cars on the road. The city is looking at ways to extend policies to turn more pavement over to pedestrians and cyclists. Oakland, California is moving to banish cars from 74 miles, or around 10% percent, of its streets.

New Orleans is spending hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects to protect it from rising seas and storms. The Crescent City is also installing more electric vehicle charging stations, and plans to make solar panels more easily available for households.

Many of these projects will address the need to reduce air pollution, which has been cited as a factor that exacerbates the effects of COVID-19 on those who contract the disease.

Walsh Construction, one of the largest contractors in the city of Chicago and in the United States, is leading the temporary conversion of a portion of the McCormick Place Convention Center into an Alternate Care Facility (ACF) for novel coronavirus patients. Construction on the first 500 beds was completed on April 3.

U of Chicago Medicine workers with face shields produced by bKL architects.

Coronavirus | Apr 4, 2020

COVID-19: Architecture firms churn out protective face shields using their 3D printers

Architecture firms from coast to coast have suddenly turned into manufacturing centers for the production of protective face shields and face masks for use by healthcare workers fighting the COVID-10 pandemic.