How New York City Could Reopen Its Economy, Neighborhood by Neighborhood

Exploring ways that local urban planners could manage quarantines and economic shutdowns in spatial and geographic terms, a team of researchers developed a model with the goal of finding a way to bring down overall infection rates at the lowest possible economic cost. Using New York City as an example, Chicago Booth’s John R. Birge and Ozan Candogan and Northwestern PhD candidate Yiding Feng find that some urban neighborhoods and public spaces may serve as hotspots for disease transmission and should be targeted for closure—but elsewhere, certain hubs of vital economic activity could remain open. (Read more about the research.)

Neighborhood by neighborhood, rather than citywide

These interactive maps illustrate a range of scenarios in which leaders could open up economic activity in certain zip codes across New York while fully or partially shutting down others.

How to account for what happens beyond the city limits?

Effectively targeting urban neighborhoods would depend on coordination with other local and state governments. New York City doesn’t exist in isolation, so a refusal to halt activity by counties in New Jersey, for example, could undo even the best-laid plan for Manhattan.