Lost allure of America’s biggest cities

Living in a city became a way to encourage health. People could walk where they needed to go and support one another in tight-knit social networks.

As the threat of the coronavirus lessens, some who fled major cities might elect to stay away, while others will want to flock back to the perks of urban living.

“How people behave in a pandemic is probably not a great guide to how they want to live their lives in normal times,” Kolko said. “We are living in the middle of a grand forced experiment, but we really don’t know how the experiment is going to play out.”

So much is unknown. What will happen to housing prices, whose meteoric rise in cities was a big part of what was driving people away? Or immigration — one of the most important forces contributing to growth in cities? Already under the Trump administration those numbers were slowing. And cities themselves will likely look different as they begin to plan for the possibility of pandemics.

Cities of all sizes may soon look less alluring if drastic drops in income, sales and tourism tax revenue leave gaping holes in budgets.

Four of the five cities most vulnerable to the financial impact of the coronavirus are in Ohio, where cities rely heavily on income tax, a Brookings Institution report found. In California, Los Angeles County is expected to lose $1 billion in sales tax revenue this fiscal year. And in New York City, where tourism and hotel tax revenue are among the losses, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city faces a revenue shortfall of up to $10 billion.

“We’re not going to be able to provide basic services and actually have a normal society if we don’t get help from the federal government,” he said on CNN recently.