Thread by @grescoe

Netflix binges.
Late-night Skype sessions with a bottle of wine.
Stress baking.
With gyms, playgrounds, + pools closed, #covid19 is set to cause another public health crisis: an epidemic of inactivity.

Fortunately, there's one outlet available.
In many, if not most, cities in North America (unlike some European cities, which can be much denser) public parks provide ample room for outdoor exercise, strolling, giving the kids fresh air.

Great North American urban parks were planned after epidemics of TB, cholera, and typhoid—often explicitly to provide city people with salubrious public space to escape crowded neighborhoods.

Some of the greatest were laid out by landscape architect (and civil war sanitary officer) Frederick Law Olmsted, among them Central Park, #Boston's Emerald Necklace, and #Montreal's Mont-Royal.

Today, for fear of contagion, some cities—among them #Halifax and #Toronto—are closing these resources, so crucial to physical and mental health, to the public.
cc: @JohnTory @jen_keesmaat

This is a mistake. There is an alternative, one that cities like #Portland (OR) have already taken.
Close the parks not to people—but to cars.
Parking lots and cross-park roads are what encourage gatherings and crowds.
cc: @val_plante @projetmontreal
oregonlive.com/portland/2020/…

As the weather improves, some monitoring by park officials and police will no doubt be necessary, but...

Parks, accessed on foot and by bicycle, provide more than enough space for physical distancing. When people arrive by carload, then gather in parking lots, the danger begins.

An excess of caution is normal in such times.
But closing parks imposes another burden on citizens:

The burden of inactivity.