1. On these end of city takes that seem to endlessly proliferate: several things strike me. I’ll just state them out here.
2. The first is how they always center around just to cities New York City and San Francisco, even as places like LA or Miami or Houston have been very hard hit by COVID-19.
3. The second is how particularly American they are. There is virtually no conversation or sense that Toronto is at dearth’s door.
4. Yes all of these takes are about lifestyle, no one is addressing the economic implications of the death of cities ...
5. If we are to even partially believe an entire school of urban economics that stretches from Alfred Marshall and Jane Jacobs to Ed Glaeser and Enrico Morretti, End of cities poses pretty bleak implications for American innovation, productivity and competitiveness.
6. That literature suggests that innovation and productivity are pretty closely linked to density, diversity, clustering and other characteristics of cities. Moretti in particular suggests that a more spread out spatial pattern would cost us a lot in terms of economic output.
7. And the US already has more cities or metropolitan areas and a much more stretched out or suburban pattern than most of its competitors. Any further decentralization which seem to have significant costs in terms of innovation, productivity and competitiveness.
8. Just interesting to me how limited this conversation has been up till now.
