They Just Walked Away

In her most recent Washington Post column Megan McArdle expresses optimism about the future of American cities:

Hell is other people, wrote Sartre, and especially on the crosstown bus. They’re hellacious indeed with a deadly virus running around. Such inconveniences drove the middle class out in mid-century, hastened by rising crime and, yes, the riots. Why shouldn’t we expect to see a second exodus now, when software is making it easier than ever to work where you please?

In the short run, perhaps we will; San Francisco rents dropped nearly 10 percent in May, after tech giants announced that they’d be making their work-from-home arrangements permanent. But of course, falling prices make cities more attractive despite declining amenities; that’s why people stayed in Detroit even when the jobs left.

Nor are the problems of the cities quite as dire as they were in the 1960s. Zoom simply isn’t as revolutionary as the automobile. The car was better than the buggy on almost every dimension. But Zoom strips out vital social cues and skips the casual conversations at the office coffee pot that can spark new ideas or solutions to old problems. It might ultimately augment smaller offices; it is unlikely to substitute for them entirely.

Nonetheless, some will no doubt pick up and leave for the immediate future. But eventually the viral threat will most likely fade, either because we all got a vaccine or because we all got covid-19. Would-be rusticators will remember that you still cannot easily drink a cocktail, find a mate, groom a sales prospect or eat a meal over Zoom. And then cities will grow again, as they have over the millennia, despite even more daunting threats than covid-19 or abusive cops: because what’s there isn’t anywhere else except, maybe, in another city.

That suggests that I make some predictions about the aftermath of this annus horribilis:

• Cities whose populations have been declining like Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit will see the declines accelerate.
• Cities whose populations have increased due to greater numbers of immigrants like New York and Los Angeles will see declines.
• The operating costs of cities will increase sharply while revenues decrease.
• 2020 has been what the insurance biz calls a “capital event”. Some insurances companies will not survive and will be acquired by other, larger companies.
• The stockholders of large publicly-held companies will not be eager to invest in declining cities. That includes grocery chains, drugstore chains, and big box stores, many of which have been looted during the recent upheavals.
• For some who’ve lost their jobs during the lockdowns unemployment will become permanent.
• For some remote work-from-home will become permanent. That will tend to reduce the value of office space, real estate values, and taxes that can be realized from real estate.
• Most sit-down restaurants will not be able to survive with legally mandated social distancing. Or on carry out alone. That will have a run-on effect on property taxes.

Said another way COVID-19, government fecklessness, mass demonstrations, looting, and uncertainty will accelerate pre-existing conditions.

Over the last half century archaeologists have learned an enormous amount about the Maya civilization. They preserved their history with a writing system that has only recently been recognized as a writing system and deciphered. They had sophisticated mathematics and astronomy as well as complex systems of trade and law.

By and large their cities were not destroyed by war or famine or environmental change. The people just walked away leaving empty cities. They just walked away.