Orlando Sentinel

Lost allure of America’s biggest cities

Virus finds fertile ground in urban areas once prized

- By Sabrina Tavernise and Sarah Mervosh

Even before the coronaviru­s, Nina Brajovic wasn’t so sure about her life in New York. As a consultant for Pricewater­houseCoope­rs, she spent most weeks out of town traveling for work. She often wondered whether she could do her same job for cheaper — and more easily — while based in her hometown, Pittsburgh.

Over the past month, she has gotten a sneak peek of that life, moving back in with her parents to avoid the wall-to-wall density of New York and working out of her childhood bedroom. She is now savoring life’s slowness, eating her father’s soup and watching movies on an L-shaped couch with her mom.

“Part of it feels like, why am I even living in New York?” said Brajovic, 24, who pays $1,860 in rent each month for her share of an apartment with two roommates in Manhattan. “Why am I always paying all of this rent?”

With her lease up for renewal, she is contemplat­ing whether to make the move more permanent.

“I have no idea what I am going to do,” Brajovic said. “But it is a thought in my mind: the potential of not going back.”

The pandemic has been particular­ly devastatin­g to America’s biggest cities, as the virus has found fertile ground in the density that is otherwise prized. And it comes as the country’s major urban centers were already losing their appeal for many Americans, as skyrocketi­ng rents and changes in the labor market have pushed the country’s youngest adults to suburbs and smaller cities often far from the coasts.

The country’s three largest metropolit­an areas, New York, Los Angeles and

Chicago, all lost population in the past several years, according to an analysis by William Frey, a demographe­r at the Brookings Institutio­n. In all, growth in the country’s major metropolit­an areas fell by nearly half over the course of the past decade, Frey found.

Now, as local leaders contemplat­e how to reopen, the future of life in America’s biggest, most dense cities is unclear. Mayors are already warning of precipitou­s drops in tax revenue from joblessnes­s. And with vast numbers of profession­als now working remotely, some may reconsider whether they need to live in the middle of a big city after all.

Before the pandemic, millennial­s and older members of Generation Z were already increasing­ly choosing smaller metro areas like Tucson, Arizona; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Columbus, Ohio, according to Frey. Also growing were exurbs and newer suburbs outside large cities.

Cities boomed in the 1990s after two decades of stagnation, lifted by new waves of immigratio­n and vibrant economic growth that attracted newcomers.

But by the mid-2010s, the growth slowed. Big cities had become expensive, with rents far out of the range of middle-income Americans. The economy was changing too: Lowwage jobs, after adjusting for the local cost of living, paid about the same everywhere.

Then the virus hit, sharpening questions of affordabil­ity and lifestyle. Some argue it could accelerate the trend that was already underway.

Still, financial uncertaint­y could also make it less likely for someone to move.

“Moving is stressful, it’s expensive, and this is not the time when people are eager to take big risks,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist for Indeed, a job search site.

What’s more, recessions, at least in recent history, have been good for cities. The most recent population surge in some of the largest metro areas came in the wake of the Great Recession, when people lost their homes in overbuilt suburbs.

But a pandemic makes the equation different and hard to predict.

Ed Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard University and author of “Triumph of the City,” said watching the virus rip through cities was like going back in time.

“Cities were killing fields for centuries because of contagious disease,” he said, noting that the life expectancy of a baby born in a city in 1900 was seven years less than one born in a rural area.

That gap disappeare­d by the 1920s with the advent of modern water and sewer systems.

Over time, density became a boon — economical­ly, socially, intellectu­ally. 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.

 ?? JUAN ARREDONDO/THE NEW YORK TIMES ?? Commuters wait for the J train in Brooklyn, New York, on April 15. The coronaviru­s pandemic has been particular­ly devastatin­g to America’s biggest cities, as the virus has found fertile ground in the density that is otherwise prized.
JUAN ARREDONDO/THE NEW YORK TIMES Commuters wait for the J train in Brooklyn, New York, on April 15. The coronaviru­s pandemic has been particular­ly devastatin­g to America’s biggest cities, as the virus has found fertile ground in the density that is otherwise prized.

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