1.A couple of things I have come to learn from being old enough to have lived through several crises and having studies many others ...

2. The first is that crises give rise to a heckuva lot of dystopian thinking & projections - the end of economic systems, the end of global economic orders, & in my area the end of cities (boy have I heard that one enough times).

3. They also give rise to utopian thinking & projections - we will transform into better, more equitable socialist systems; morph into self-reliant local communities; turn cities into walkable, bikeable, green paradises.

4. The reality is that crises accelerate a few fundamental trends already underway. And most things same pretty much the same.

5. As an urbanist, I never ever confronted the effects of pandemics on cities before this crisis, even though I was born in the middle of one, and most of my aunts and uncles were children during the Spanish Flu.

6. And recall it took more than two decades after the Spanish Flu - the Great Depression & WWII - to spur meaningful change in the economy.

7. In the midst of a crisis it is essential to try to separate the short term from the long term.

8. In the long term things look far less different (though there will be some. changes) and far less bleak.