In a few short weeks, life as we know it has come to a halt across much of the globe. As the coronavirus spreads, offices, schools, and all manner of retail establishments have closed. Train and bus services have been severely reduced. An endless expanse of highways and other fossil-fuel infrastructure sit nearly vacant, generating a litany of misguided headlines about how the pandemic has been good for carbon emissions. This is not a model for how climate action could restructure American life. But it is revealing the importance of a few “low-tech” infrastructures that are rarely at the center of our Green New Deal–related conversations.

Suddenly, our parks, trails, wide sidewalks, rooftops, and balconies are bustling — full of people seeking a respite from isolation in the green and civic infrastructure that binds our communities together. Several national parks grew so overcrowded that, as social distancing became impossible, they had to close. An axiom among disaster planners is that events like the pandemic do not cause inequality, they merely reveal it. While that’s certainly true of COVID-19, it is also showing just how vital our public spaces and infrastructures are to everyday life.

When the time comes to put tens of millions of Americans back to work, these sites of maintenance and care are where massive federal investments must be made: in the maintenance, retrofits, and repair of our parks, sidewalks, roadways, and existing transportation infrastructure; in our schools, libraries, and housing; and in the other elements of the built and natural environment that could comprise a Green Stimulus. Rather than pouring money into massive, new capital projects like highway expansions of exurban development, the just and low-carbon path forward lies in stitching our towns and cities back together through projects of “maintenance and care.”