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There seems to be a pretty clear consensus that rural living won't make a comeback, which I agree with. In the past, people used to generate a significant amount of income / self subsistence from the land. Now days that's gone, acreage is purely for enjoyment and distance is a big hindrance to modern convenience.
The funny thing is, I think rural America is one of the few areas that would benefit from "deindustrialization."
The "deindustrialization" I'm referring to here is that of American agriculture, where a relative handful of farmers (or corporate farmers) control vast amounts of acreage devoted to producing four main crops: corn, wheat, soybeans and feed for cattle (corn again, which isn't good for the cattle). We also produce most of our animal protein on factory farms devoted to the raising of chickens and pigs.
Fewer farmers means fewer rural towns, as their reason for being has been removed.
A growing number of farmers advocate for rasing animals and growing crops in a more sustainable fashion that doesn't require huge amounts of inputs. These methods also produce not only more nutritious but better-tasting food. (There's a crop grown in large quantities near me that has been seriously degraded in quality by the demands of industrial agriculture: tomatoes, which are almost synonymous with New Jersey. Jersey tomatoes used to burst with rich flavor. They were also misshapen, "ugly," and fragile: they didn't travel well and couldn't be picked mechanically. Jersey tomatoes today look fabulous, travel well, and can be picked by mechanical harvesters. It's a testimony to the quality of Jersey feedstock and soil that these tomatoes still have some flavor to them, or maybe it's testimony to the fact that Philadelphia lies close to where most Jersey tomatoes are grown.)
Edited to add: What these method's won't produce, however, is tons and tons of cheap food, mostly grain. We may need to figure out some way to take care of the food-insecure afterwards, but the rest of us should be living longer, healthier lives as a result.
An example of what could still be can also be found near Philadelphia, this time to its west: Lancaster County. This is Amish country, where farms are a birthright for every male child. (The fact that the Amish keep producing young boys while they're not making any more land in Lancaster County has led to the rise of Amish communities in Ohio and (especially) Indiana now.) The rural landscape of Lancaster County is dotted with small family farms, and Lancaster County's smaller communities remain vital and in good health. (Same goes for Lancaster City, pop. ~65,000, which I swear has to be the coolest small city on the entire East Coast. Lancaster's population is in the sweet spot. More on that in a minute.)
Surburbs, exurbs, and small cities all allow for more space. If working from home doesn't materialize significantly, suburbs would be the strongest contender as people still don't want regular 1 hr commutes. But if it does, I think exurbs and small cities would fair better as suburbs still have a lot of the big city problems: air pollution, congestion, higher prices without the urban fabric.
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Between exurbs and small cities, it depends on whether people have a preference for big city amenities over urban fabric. Small cities can still have pretty decent downtowns, the same walkability and urban neighborhoods of larger cities, but they don't have things like sports venues, big airports, large hospitals. Exurbs don't have a comparable city center, but they offer driving distance to these things only large cities have. My vote is for small cities, I think people would forgo the amenities in able to get an urban experience mixed with affordability and close access to undeveloped nature land.
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Originally Posted by Phil P
Also, a point of clarification, yes I too believe the city is not going anywhere. But a city does not equal a megalopolis. Most all the great cities of history were the size of what today we were consider a small city <500,000 people. There's benefits to cities, but that doesn't mean a city has to be >5,000,000 people to be relevant, as is often assumed on C-D. The spill over effects, urban fabric, specialization, logistics and labor pools could all be present in a city of 100,000 people.
Indeed, it was urbanization that transformed us from a rural society to one with small cities in the 18-1900s, but it was suburbanization that turned those urban 'small' cities into megalopolises of millions and millions of people living in the same area. That, coupled with mega giant corporations like Amazon and GE.
That "suburbanization" dates all the way back to the 1700s, as people, especially migrants from abroad, flocked to areas on the fringes of the cities of the time.
New York's City Hall used cheaper stone for its north-side walls when it was built ca. 1816 because the city fathers thought the city would not expand to its north. Boy, were they wrong.
Southwark and Northern Liberties both were among the nation's 10 most populous "cities" in the Census of (I think) 1800. (Or thereabouts.) At that time, they were separate municipalities — yes, "suburbs" of Philadelphia, which absorbed them in 1854.
So the trend towards metropolis has a very long pedigree in the US too.
But to your other point: I think I still have in my library a book written in the late 1970s by social critic Kirkpatrick Sale titled "Human Scale." The book was devoted entirely to the notion that our society should be reoriented around the old phrase "Man the measure of all things." Or, as he put it, "Every organism has a size beyond which it ought not grow."
Cities were (and are) organisms too, both in his view and mine. When I interviewed him about the book for my college radio station, I asked him what he thought was the optimal city size.
His answer? 50,000.
That, he explained, was large enough to support the cultural and social amenities most people desire, including things like orchestras and museums. But it was still small enough to be comprehensible to the individual citizen and governable as well.
I think the poll is inherently flawed. The "urban renaissance" is not dead, and staying in cities just as they are is not even a choice on the poll.
Covid will pass, people will be so happy to be right back into the lifestyle they love and are comfortable with. Some people will even be glad to be back into their hellish commute. They were too isolated at home, lonely, and don't like mingling their work space with their relaxation space, muddling up their mind with no barriers between them.
I for one can't wait to go to some very large cities I am missing so much during covid.
I think the poll is inherently flawed. The "urban renaissance" is not dead, and staying in cities just as they are is not even a choice on the poll.
Covid will pass, people will be so happy to be right back into the lifestyle they love and are comfortable with. Some people will even be glad to be back into their hellish commute. They were too isolated at home, lonely, and don't like mingling their work space with their relaxation space, muddling up their mind with no barriers between them.
I for one can't wait to go to some very large cities I am missing so much during covid.
I think some people would be happy to move to suburbs and exurbs. I work in a suburban location and people there were happy to be able to move out of the city. While some larger companies were moving into the city to try to get better (aka young) applicants, once some of these companies moved in, the rent in those areas increased dramatically.
The likely outcome is that people will probably have to come into the office sometimes, but can work from home more often- probably a few days a week. This will open up working in places that require a longer commute. I work in a job where many people can telework two or three days a week, and we have people living in rural areas (that is extreme) and others living in urban, exurban and suburban areas that aren’t really close to the office (more common). We did have a group totally lose telework a few weeks before COVID-19 started and have lost a few people who presumably found jobs closer to home assuming that they’d have to go back to full-time in office. However, with this model, we had relatively low turnover and people were able to live in a variety of areas.
Ramenaddict, Yes many will prefer the liberties of working at home when they were not allowed to do so pre-covid, (including some sneaky naps) but some businesses will not allow this post-covid, some may hybrid, and so all will adjust to what their company decides.
Some people would be happy to move to suburbs and exburbs, sure. But some other people living in the suburbs are itching to move to the city and waiting for covid to pass in order to do so safely. It may come out a complete wash. Where there's openings in desirable neighborhoods, they will be filled. If rents decrease for a year or two to compensate for covid losses, it surely won't last. The population is still growing, and as long as the population is not decreasing, the only way cities will suffer is with severe decline (as in Detroit automotive). Luckily for most large cities their economy is not based solely on one industry.
Ramenaddict, Yes many will prefer the liberties of working at home when they were not allowed to do so pre-covid, (including some sneaky naps) but some businesses will not allow this post-covid, some may hybrid, and so all will adjust to what their company decides.
Some people would be happy to move to suburbs and exburbs, sure. But some other people living in the suburbs are itching to move to the city and waiting for covid to pass in order to do so safely. It may come out a complete wash. Where there's openings in desirable neighborhoods, they will be filled. If rents decrease for a year or two to compensate for covid losses, it surely won't last. The population is still growing, and as long as the population is not decreasing, the only way cities will suffer is with severe decline (as in Detroit automotive). Luckily for most large cities their economy is not based solely on one industry.
The economies of DC and Houston are both based around one industry, while cities such as San Diego, Las Vegas, San Antonio and Miami all have fairly weak economies.
San Diego, Las Vegas, Miami and San Antonio have benefited from rampant migration out of Mexico and Latin America over the past several decades as well as rampant migration of wealthy retirees from the Northeast and Midwest despite their nebulous economic base.
Meanwhile, with the other 2 cities, their industries cities are far less prone to severe downturns.
*DC - The federal government can print and borrow money infinitely to continue its operations despite its budget deficits.
*Houston - People will always have to use oil to fuel their transportation vehicles.
Conversely, A new automobile is the 2nd biggest purchase an individual will ever make and is the first thing people will put off when money is tight.
Detroit just has/had extremely bad luck between its location and the industry it became tied to.
Last edited by citidata18; 08-09-2020 at 08:48 AM..
The economies of DC and Houston are both based around one industry, while cities such as San Diego, Las Vegas, San Antonio and Miami all have fairly weak economies.
San Diego, Las Vegas Miami and San Antonio have benefited from rampant migration out of Mexico and Latin America over the past several decades as well as rampant migration of wealthy retirees from the Northeast and Midwest despite their nebulous economic base.
Meanwhile, with the other 2 cities, their industries cities are far less prone to severe downturns.
*DC - The federal government can print and borrow money infinitely to continue its operations despite its budget deficits.
*Houston - People will always have to use oil to fuel their transportation vehicles.
Conversely, A new automobile is the 2nd biggest purchase an individual will ever make and is the first thing people will put off when money is tight.
Detroit just has/had extremely bad luck between its location and the industry it became tied to.
No longer a safe assumption as EV technology improves. If fuel cells become a practical source of automotive power, the assumption becomes even less valid.
As far as working from home is concerned, I think that most companies won't return to requiring everyone to come back to the office once the crisis passes or COVID, like HIV, ceases to be a fatal infection and becomes a manageable chronic one instead. A number of studies have found that worker productivity has gone up as a result of working from home. So that IMO will be a permanent shift in how our office economy functions, and as a result, office vacancy rates should rise unless and until more businesses form to fill some of it or more of the empty office buildings are converted to apartments, which is what should happen in some of those overpriced big cities.
What does take a hit is innovation. That, it seems, happens more often in environments where people come into face-to-face contact with one another; "brainstorming" is more effective when all the brains are in the same room. So what's likely to happen is that companies that depend on innovation for their growth will probably adopt a hybrid work schedule where workers who can work from home may do so part of the time but need to be in the office for at least some of the time.
No longer a safe assumption as EV technology improves. If fuel cells become a practical source of automotive power, the assumption becomes even less valid.
It's going to be decades (likely when many of us are old or dead) before those technologies become affordable enough and the infrastrucrure extensive enough to replace ICE.
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What does take a hit is innovation. That, it seems, happens more often in environments where people come into face-to-face contact with one another; "brainstorming" is more effective when all the brains are in the same room. So what's likely to happen is that companies that depend on innovation for their growth will probably adopt a hybrid work schedule where workers who can work from home may do so part of the time but need to be in the office for at least some of the time.
It really depends on the type of innovation.
I've seen innovation take a real hit when people are forced to sit in endless meetings, killing productivity and creative juice.
I've seen some developers who sit in a remote corner of an office, or at home, do some amazing software work despite not being in the same room as anyone else.
In my opinion, innovation will continue to increase, not decrease, with remote working.
Mozart didn't write incredible music by committee. He didn't sit in all day long meetings and coming up with his music, while listening to powerpoints and other people chatting about music notes.
Isaac Newton didn't come up with the theory of gravity, calculus, or so many of his incredible scientific discoveries sitting in class with a bunch of other people. He came up with most of his earth shattering theories while at home from school due to a pandemic.
I think remote working is going to continue to expand. We didn't have easy video conferencing 10 - 20 years ago. Now it's ubiquitous. That is game changing.
I have worked remotely for more than a couple of decades. It's life changing. I have had more productive ideas and creativity than ever compared to being in a sterile, cube based setting.
I've seen innovation take a real hit when people are forced to sit in endless meetings, killing productivity and creative juice.
I've seen some developers who sit in a remote corner of an office, or at home, do some amazing software work despite not being in the same room as anyone else.
In my opinion, innovation will continue to increase, not decrease, with remote working.
Mozart didn't write incredible music by committee. He didn't sit in all day long meetings and coming up with his music, while listening to powerpoints and other people chatting about music notes.
Isaac Newton didn't come up with the theory of gravity, calculus, or so many of his incredible scientific discoveries sitting in class with a bunch of other people. He came up with most of his earth shattering theories while at home from school due to a pandemic.
I think remote working is going to continue to expand. We didn't have easy video conferencing 10 - 20 years ago. Now it's ubiquitous. That is game changing.
I have worked remotely for more than a couple of decades. It's life changing. I have had more productive ideas and creativity than ever compared to being in a sterile, cube based setting.
I'm a writer, so I understand where you're coming from with this argument.
But as you yourself said, "it depends on the type of innovation."
Mozart may not have written music by committee, but most really good investigative reporting is a team effort. While there are good solo practitioners of the craft, the nature of the work involved in putting together a documented case against a powerful individual or institution means you're going to be working with others to build it.
Lots of people have created amazing software sitting in a room somewhere writing code. But neither the Apple Macintosh nor the IBM Personal Computer were solo efforts.
That latter type of innovation does suffer when there's no place for people to get together. Meetings can be time sinks, but as I can attest from working with editors, even a solo article benefits from feedback from others. That one-on-one feedback can easily take place remotely, but there are certain aspects of group dynamics that don't really work well when the group is not a single entity in physical space but a collection of individual cells. That's true whether the subject is some new product or a panel talk show (yes, the dynamic of a panel talk show is different when the panelists are each off in their own space as opposed to in the same room). Like the old slogan promoting long-distance phone calls, a Zoom meeting is "the next best thing to being there," and I've now participated in plenty of Zoom meetings. But for some things, it's really better to actually be there.
I get a lot of the intelligence I've used in my real estate reporting by going to social networking events. Have you participated in a Zoom happy hour? It's really not the same as the event that takes place in one single physical space. You can't "work the room" when there's no room to work.
I'll just say that the reporting I've read so far on the subject shows productivity gains but slippage in innovation when all work is shifted to remote settings. And I'm guessing that the increase in individual innovation does not offset the loss in group-dynamic innovation.
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