Globally, urbanization has been the path out of subsistence for billions of people over the course of human history. This is not to diminish the crucial role of agriculture and rural life, but rather to recognize that thriving cities are essential to innovation, which is crucial to the planet's future. The COVID-19 pandemic and the remote-work technologies that have enabled the continued productive functioning of economies has resulted in dire predictions about the viability of cities in the future. The most likely outcome, in my view, is that cities will adapt, and that national economies that nurture cities will ascend.
Cities have confronted natural and manmade challenges such as the Spanish flu in 1918, the ascendance of automobiles in the 1950s through the 1970s and the internet revolution in the 1980s and 1990s. Cities have recovered and prospered. The successful use of Zoom and Microsoft Teams has led many to say "this time is different," because the technologies can enable the economy to function without gathering together physically. The dual challenge of the COVID pandemic and widespread acceptance of technologies supporting remote work certainly poses a new serious challenge for cities.
The most obvious and disturbing urban outcomes of COVID-19 thus far are the households in financial distress, the empty downtown office buildings, empty transit, and the closed shops that formerly served people in the offices. What does the future hold? To answer that question, one must ask what roles did cities really play prior to COVID-19 and post COVID-19, how will cities' abilities to fulfill those roles change?
Increasingly, cities are the primary sources of interaction among diverse people, opinions, and economic realities. They are civilizing, stabilizing forces. These interactions are productive forces for innovation and wealth generation.
The true value added by cities is not replaced by video conferencing platforms. The key functions of cities are not satisfied by these technologies and these technologies can, in the wrong circumstances, dramatically undermine these social functions (that can only be provided by cities) by reinforcing social segregation and segmentation. Sorting into homogeneous, Tiebout-like virtual communities is a natural extension of voting with one's feet. Increasingly efficient sorting will result in continued erosion of common ground, making it increasingly difficult to generate the agreement among communities necessary to solve challenges that are larger than tribal.
On the plus side, once COVID-19 is defeated, these communications technologies offer real solutions to some problems challenging the cities. In particular, infrastructure has always been a constraint on city productivity which is very expensive to overcome. Congestion limits the amount of economic activity that can be generated by firms located in the city, and, therefore, the amount of income that households can earn. The new technologies are one means to increase the amount of economic activity supported by city infrastructure at relatively low costs.
Of course, there will be a challenging period of adjustment. Increasingly, cities will have to be places where people want to live and work. More firms will have to be attracted to fill existing spaces. Households will be looking for somewhat larger spaces than is typical now in cities to support work from home. Public transit providers, which will be crucial in any successful city recovery effort, will have to tailor products and pricing to households that travel for work less frequently but have more need for travel at other times of the day
U.S. urban policy needs a national discussion centering around the support of equity and opportunity, including the support of secondary education whose investment returns are not necessarily local, but benefit the nation as a whole. In addition, we need to realize that urban, suburban, and rural economic health and social wellbeing are inexorably linked. We need politics of inclusion which can only happen through interaction among communities.
Dr. Richard Voith is a Founding Principal of Econsult Solutions, Inc. and a Penn IUR Faculty Fellow. He is known for his expertise in real estate economics, transportation, and applied microeconomics.
Sourced from: Expert Voices 2021: What Will Be the "New Normal"? | PennIUR (upenn.edu)
