I have read countless articles where urbanists seem to think that government should be paying the transit agencies to reboot when, in fact, the transit agencies are dying and have been dying for years because of a lack of service. Uber and Lyft came along and provided on time delivery, which was more important than cheap, unreliable public transit.
Much like the wave of suburbanization that spurred economic growth after the Great Depression and World War II, the question becomes will these large cities be able to recover from what could be another devastating economic depression for major cities all across the country, especially cities like New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. These cities are not only suffering from the virus, but leadership has allowed massive destructive demonstrations to go on and to destroy the businesses that help make the cities what they were prior to March 15, 2020.
The Wall Street Journal article by Richard Florida indicates that COVID-19 will not kill off cities like New York and London. He states that global cities will not only survive but revive – as they did after even deadlier epidemics, economic crises, wars, and natural disasters in the past as their commercial spaces are transformed into mixed-use areas where people live and work.
I am not convinced that young talent and innovation will remain in these cities. Clearly, talent and the innovation class are moving out of cities throughout California and New York. As an example, Tesla, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, and other companies are moving from overtaxed states like New York and California to more tax-friendly states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida.
Clearly, smaller cities, suburbs, and rural areas can thrive as people flock to them because of their ability to perform their jobs remotely. Even before March 15, I was aware of a 50-person company (engineering and architectural firm) in Texas that did not have a central office and all employees had already been working remotely for years.
There is a thought by some experts that families with children will move out of expensive cities and these folks, along with young, ambitious techies and artistic creatives, will move into more affordable cities. One of the challenges will be as housing and employment areas become more affordable, the tax base in the cities will drop.
The shift to remote work is the strongest of the pulling forces. In the past, city dwellers who desired more space had only one choice and that was to move to the nearby suburbs. Today, remote work gives them the option of relocating to further flung locations where living costs are much cheaper. Not just larger metros like Nashville, Austin, Miami, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, and Charlotte, which have enjoyed rapid growth over the past couple decades, but smaller metropolitan areas like Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bozeman, Montana, Park City, Utah, and Bentonville, Arkansas are benefiting from the rise of remote work.
There is a new catchphrase by urbanists called “15-minute neighborhoods” where people work, shop, take kids to school, and carry out all the rest of life’s daily activity in much closer proximity to where they live.
Perhaps the biggest change is the one where the pandemic has turned giant office towers into virtual dead zones. Many office workers will return once vaccines are widely available, but the shift to remote work means a significant number of employees will not return. As noted above, this will be wrenching for the restaurants and shops that depend on office foot traffic and for city budgets which stand to lose billions of dollars in tax revenue.
The Wall Street Journal goes on to indicate that fallow office towers can be converted to housing, especially much needed affordable housing. Affordable housing? How is that going to help solve the cash crisis that the cities will have? The Wall Street Journal article indicates that Manhattan’s financial district was rebuilt as a more mixed-use neighborhood after the tragedy of 9/11. That, obviously, was a once-in-a-lifetime situation, but can it happen in entire cities throughout the United States? Can the gentrification that has been occurring in certain large cities occur in a wholesale way throughout the United States? Can old warehouses and factory spaces be converted to artist lofts, galleries, and performance spaces that will result in providing the tax space the cities need?
One of the other tragedies that has occurred since the initial March 15 shutdown has everything to do with dead shopping malls and decaying office parks in the suburbs. Where co-working spaces was, for a brief period of time, “en vogue,” now employers think, “why spend money to rent a co-working space when employees can work from home?”
The Wall Street Journal states that COVID-19 is a once-in-a-century catastrophe, but it handed the country a once-in-a-century opportunity to rebuild our communities to be more equitable and more inclusive, as well as more livable. For everyone’s sake, I hope they are right. Will a great urban reset occur? I sure hope it does. Am I pessimistic that it can occur? You bet I am. It appears that job creators are moving out of our great cities and our great cities, unless there is great leadership, might be left to decay, to become empty, and to become affordable housing that does not create enough of a tax base for the success of a 21st Century City.