I will miss voting in person this fall. Wherever I have lived in this country, I have enjoyed the ritual of going to the local grade school, church, community hall, or library to exercise my democratic right. Lining up in front of these buildings, political signs all around, I get to admire (or lament) their civic forms, and also meet neighbors I did not know that I had. An impromptu community often emerges, with kids playing, people discussing politics (beyond the boundaries of the no-advertising zone of course), and entrepreneurs selling coffee. If it's a school, the classrooms are usually stripped of their desks (save for the ones awkwardly holding the adults checking registrations and handing out ballots). In the voting booth we experience a moment of solitude before triumphantly striding through the empty rooms to hand in our ballots. We get the sense that these mundane places, if only for a moment, are real civic spaces.
Like most of us, including the President, I will have to vote by mail this time. That means plugging into another kind of civic space, one that has been getting some newfound attention of late: The United States Postal Service. Let’s give its full name, by the way: It is a national resource, not a pay-to-play service like UPS or FedEx. Its postal codes, delivery routes, mail sorting centers, and local offices have helped unite us since the founding of this country.
This fall, it will also be what allows us to express our shared governance. That ability is under threat by the President and the Postmaster General, who has been undercutting service in part by removing mailboxes and sorting centers. Those measures have recently been suspended in the face of public and Congressional pressure, but the objective seems to be, at least in part, to undermine our faith in the institution as a whole.
The United States Postal Service has its problems, no more or less than many government services. It has to perform tasks that are complex, and do them for all of us, equitably, even if the expenses are higher in some areas than others. It is a large bureaucracy that has over the decades accumulated rules and regulations, as well as obligations, that do not always make sense (though blaming its problems on its pension obligations seems more of a political tactic than anything else). It is, however, in much better shape than, say, the United States Army, on which we continue to lavish large amounts of money with even less accountability or logic.
I would argue that what we need is more investment in the postal service, not less. Around the country, post offices large and small are disappearing. In New York, the grand palace that was Manhattan’s central sorting facility is turning into a train station. Chances are that you no longer have a local post office and that you make use of a service like a Kinko’s at the nearest strip mall for most of your shipping needs. If you live in an underserved area, or if your ability to get around is limited, you might not even have that option.
Post offices helped draw us together. In many countries outside the United States, they still serve as banks and as places for free services that let you connect with your government. So what if, rather than abolishing or privatizing the United States Postal Service, we used it as the core of a revived web of services, where you could go to pay your taxes or get your hunting licenses, your permits for house renovations or digging a trench, or other information and help? What if they became community centers once again?
Those local post offices could anchor neighborhoods, be connected to transportation hubs, and could also be places of collective identity. The last decade has seen the transformation of libraries into such places; perhaps the two institutions could be combined or woven together. I even dream of a day when post offices might (as they once did) express civic pride without towering over us: Unlike courthouses or town halls, they tend to be modest enterprises that, at least during the Roosevelt era, reflected our aspirations and ideals with large-scale murals and mosaics.
For now, many of us will need to vote by mail and also use many of USPS's other services remotely. That reality will not go away once the COVID-19 crisis passes, which means that we also need a more robust digital equivalent of the post office. This virtual version should sell more than just stamps, acting as a clearing house for government services and information, and connecting us across the ether as much as the mail carriers with their floppy bags connect us neighborhood by neighborhood. Its products, and the design of its services, should be no less beautiful than, say, the stamps produced in other countries.
The United States Post Office has been, and should be, a well-designed place of connection between ourselves, and between us and our government. It should have spaces that represent and serve us and services that bind us; it should be an exemplar of a government of, by, and for the people.
This might be a romantic vision, but it is one worth fighting for, and one that architects can help make a reality. In the meantime, we must ensure that voting by mail this fall will be not only be possible, but will be easy, convenient, and safe. In achieving that goal we may also be helping to ensure the continued existence and viability of the United States Postal Service itself.
Aaron Betsky is a regularly featured columnist whose views and conclusions are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine nor of the American Institute of Architects.
