As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to transform lives and ways of living across the globe, it is becoming increasingly clear that adaptations involving both physical and institutional infrastructure are warranted. Cities are at the forefront of these adaptive changes as dense urban environments are particularly vulnerable to the spread of contagious airborne diseases such as the novel coronavirus. This paper considers how COVID-19 might influence where and how people live, work, recreate, and move about the city, and how these changing patterns might in turn shape future development trajectories. We also discuss how cities are currently responding to the public health threat posed by COVID-19, and how they might use planning and design strategies to improve resilience in the face of future pandemics.

On March 17, 2020, the state of Florida held its Presidential Preference Primary amid a growing global pandemic. At that time, health officials and the media continued to report on the disproportionate dangers of serious health complications and death from COVID-19 for the elderly population. How did the prevalence of COVID-19 along with age affect Florida voters’ propensity to vote on Election Day? Using individual-level voting data from the primary along with county COVID-19 rates, I test the interactive effects of the prevalence of COVID-19 and voter age on the probability of voting in person or not voting at all. I find that for both Democrats and Republicans, voters were more likely to not vote in any manner as the county COVID-19 rate and their age increased. This effect is more pronounced for Republicans. No differences in probabilities of in person voting occurred for Democrat voters based upon age, but older Republicans were less likely to vote in person as the county COVID-19 rate increased.

The general growth in public affairs programs offering hybrid and online courses to reach a wide variety of students, along with the necessity of doing so during a global health pandemic, calls for an investigation of best practices in teaching public affairs statistics and research-oriented courses. These courses often require the use of a statistics software program. I describe my use of R with the R Commander package that turns the R interface into a graphical user interface (GUI) similar to other, commonly used software programs. I detail my experience using this software through a case study utilizing two different pedagogical techniques. I find that the use of instructor-generated video tutorials of the R Commander software program allows hybrid and online students to effectively learn statistics concepts in a similar manner and as effectively as students in traditional, in-person courses.

Fire departments are comprised of individuals known to have high levels of public service motivation (PSM). One of the most important measures of fire personnel performance, turnout time, may be affected by managerial strategies. Turnout time measures the time elapsed from when the emergency dispatcher informs the fire unit of an emergency and when the unit leaves the fire station. In 2015, the El Paso Fire Department required fire personnel to participate in a training module focusing on the importance of emergency response and turnout time. At the conclusion of the training period, the department began enforcing a turnout time policy of 90 s, with units being required to submit paperwork concerning their response if they exceeded the 90 s requirement. We find that training and policy enforcement decrease turnout times in these high PSM employees, but policy enforcement with sanctions yields the largest decrease.