God knows I miss the days when New Orleans was cheap as hell and it was easy to live there and be an artist.
The song of American urbanization plays on an accordion. Americans compressed themselves into urban areas in the early 20th century. By mid-century, many white families were fanning out into the suburbs. Then, in the early 21st century, young people rushed back into downtown areas. But in the past few years, American cities have begun to exhale many residents, who have moved to smaller metros and southern suburbs. As with so many other trends, the pandemic will accelerate that exodus. Empty storefronts will beget empty apartments on the floors above them. The American cities waiting on the other side of this crisis will not be the same. They will be “safer” in almost every respect—healthier, blander, and more boring, with fewer tourists, less exciting food, and a desiccated nightlife. The urban obsession with well-being will extend from cycling and salads to mask design and social distancing. Many thousands of young people who might have giddily flocked to the most expensive downtown areas may assess the collapse in living standards and amenities and decide it’s not worth it. Census figures will show that the urban exodus went into hyperdrive in the COVID years. There will be headlines exclaiming the decline of the American city or, more punchy, “Americans to New York: ‘Drop Dead.’” Then something interesting will happen. The accordion will constrict again and American cities will have a renaissance of affordability.
“Right now, you see rich people literally fleeing New York for their upstate homes,” Jeremiah Moss, the author of the book Vanishing New York, told me. “What’s happening to New York is traumatic, and strange, and post-apocalyptic. But I reserve a dark optimism about all this, if cities become less expensive over the next few years.”
In the decade after the Great Recession, American cities became very popular—and very expensive. Neighborhoods that were once jewel boxes of eccentricity became yuppie depots. Wealth elbowed out weirdness, and rents soared to suffocating levels that pushed out many of the families and stores that made the cities unique.
“Cities have historically been places for outsiders, but they became ruinously expensive in the last decade when they became popular with mainstream people,” Moss said. “If cities become less expensive in the next few years, it might allow artists and weirdos and the counterculture to come back to New York and places like it. It could make cities interesting again.” As Moss spoke, I thought of a forest fire that rages through the underbrush and leaves a legacy of ash. To look at the aftermath of the fire is to see little but death and ruin. But in time, the equilibrium of the environment is reset. Sunlight reaches the forest floor. New things grow that couldn’t have before the fire changed the landscape.
The COVID-19 pandemic will leave two legacies for the American streetscape. In the next few years, the virus will reduce to rubble many thousands of cherished local stores. Chains will surge, restaurants will feel desolate, and the density of humanity that is the life force of cities will be ruinously arrested by the disease.
But the near death of the American city will also be its rebirth. When rents fall, mom-and-pop stores will rise again—America will need them. Immigrants will return in full force when a sensible administration recognizes that America needs them, too. Cheaper empty spaces will be incubators for stores that serve up ancient pleasures, like coffee and books, and novel combinations of health tech, fitness, and apparel. Eccentric chefs will return, and Americans will remember, if they ever forgot, the sacred joys of a private plate in a place that buzzes with strangers. From the ashes, something new will grow, and something better, too, if we build it right.