Urban Growth Reversal Assured After Pandemic

In fact, it’s already begun…

For a good 20 to 25 years, the “white flight” from cities into suburbs slowed and then reversed, with young people and old alike moving into cities. Many cities, once blighted by crime, began growing again- becoming more glamorous (like New York), while some others exploded in growth as their cultural popularity became suddenly trendy. The West Coast in particular (San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle) witnessed an unprecedented expansion, while some mountainous cities in Denver or Arizona became popular. Even Austin, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia became the “go to” hip areas for young adults, and new companies popped up in such places.

This trend slowed after 2008′s Great Recession, when the housing bubble collapsed for a few years. Paradoxically, as the areas mentioned above recovered first, their housing to income ratios became unsustainable, and more and more people found themselves moving further from the cities they worked within in order to afford housing. Some sold their outrageously priced homes in these areas for cheaper housing in new areas altogether– often far away from their original urban areas.

But then the Coronavirus Pandemic hit, and the new trend of moving to rural areas gained a great deal of traction. Historically, pandemics cause the wealthy to move out to rural zones for the short term initially, but lead to many liking the change and finding ways to settle “out” from crowded disease- or crime-prone urban areas for at least a generation. The wealthy have the choice of where to live, and when crowding presents a threat, they are the first to escape into the country. This aspect of human behavior proves true even now.

Here’s one such article that touches on this subject: www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/13/how-coronavirus-could-upend-human-migration-251715

“Indeed, most of humanity today is a bit like those cruise ship passengers: densely packed into areas known as cities. And just as many people will think twice before getting on a cruise ship again, so too will many rethink where they presently live depending on how their city, or country, handled the pandemic.”

As the pandemic has proven that many white-collar jobs are easily “work-at-home,” the choice of where to live expands greatly. Who wouldn’t rather live where they have space to enjoy themselves sans the dangerous crowds? And, as many tested out living differently without all the amenities cities offer (entertainment and consumption) they could realize they prefer other sources of life fulfillment.

Even low-density nations are becoming more appealing lately: ”Canada, which has an enviably effective health care system, has become an immigration superpower. In 2018, its net immigration was 350,000, higher than America’s 250,000 even though Canada has 1/10 the U.S. population. About 1 million Americans already live in Canada, with numbers ticking up since Trump’s election. In the years ahead, more Yanks may head north and become Canucks or move even further abroad.“

Millennials and Gen-Z young adults today mostly work in the service and gig economy, and can’t afford to wait out the economic storm the pandemic has wrought. With older people having the choice to move and moving, and younger adults being required to do so to survive, we are likely to see a mass migration: “Indeed, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago—America’s three largest metro areas—have been losing people for nearly a decade. Some of the outflow has been backfilled by new arrivals, but not enough to keep population levels in those cities from dropping. A new inflow of arrivals into our most expensive cities is far less likely today, with unemployment potentially hovering at 20 percent for the foreseeable future and immigration grinding to a halt. Populations in America’s largest and most expensive cities could plunge.“

Another aspect of rural versus city living?– Food supply. Our global supply chains are highly vulnerable to things like pandemics, as well as our recent oil glut issues and the exponentially growing disruptions to crops due to global climate change. Droughts, floods, and fires are making sure supplies of food less and less certain. Prices are going higher and people will seek to find ways to have easier and cheaper access to food. It’s a higher priority even than shelter, and hungry people can become dangerous people. Those who can grow their own (even just a nice little garden) or be near areas that produce food will feel safer.

As the article says, migration and immigration are already an issue: “Migration has numerous fundamental drivers that have profoundly remapped the human population in just the 75 years since World War II. Demographic imbalances and labor shortages have pulled workers and their families from Latin America into the U.S. and from Turkey into Europe; conflict and civil war have pushed tens of millions of refugees from Central and South America, as well as Afghanistan and Arab nations, into North America and Western Europe; the simultaneous dislocations emanating from the offshoring and automating labor, coupled with the financial crisis, have forced millions to relocate as well; and climate change has already created more refugees and internally displaced peoples than warfare. Not only are all of these factors still acting strongly upon humanity, but they are now interacting in complex ways with one another. And now we have the coronavirus thrown into the mix.“

Get ready for the next mass exodus from some areas into others, even “…blue state American urbanites decamping en masse to red states such as Oklahoma,” causing a lot of upheaval of what was once taken for granted for several generations in a row.

And for those of us living in at least semi-rural areas, this means we’ll have to brace for impact as suddenly development goes crazy around us and we lose what we loved the most about where we live. Although, to begin with, I suspect the Depression we’ve entered will slow down development, especially commercial development, for at least half a decade.

Lots to think about and prepare for, that is certain.