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Why We Don’t Believe the Big City Obituary

America’s cities offer the greatest hope for the country’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Fortunately, the people who live there agree.

People walk down a street lined with outdoor seating for restaurants in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York in July 2020. 

People walk down a street lined with outdoor seating for restaurants in the Little Italy neighborhood of New York in July 2020. 

Photographer: Angus Mordant/Bloomberg
By
Ivo Daalder, Will Johnson and Samuel Kling

Like social distancing and curbside pickup, alarm about the future of American cities has become a mainstay of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Pointing to downtown office towers usurped by Zoom, shuttered restaurants and stores, and an upsurge in crime and taxes, some are predicting a mass retreat from urban life. “New York City is dead forever,” declared a viral LinkedIn post in August. Last year “ended the boom of cities that started in the 1990s,” announced a recent op-ed in The Hill. Much of the analysis has been fatalistic—gloomy predictions grounded in hunches and snippets of short-term data.