April 2, 2020

CITIES WERE A MISTAKE:

After coronavirus, we need to rethink densely populated cities (JOEL KOTKIN, April 1, 2020, Fortune)

For the better part of this millennium, the nation's urban planning punditry has predicted that the future lay with its densest, largest, and most cosmopolitan cities. Yet even before the onslaught of COVID-19, demographic and economic forces were pointing in the exact opposite direction, as our biggest cities--New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago--all lost population in 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic may be too early to measure, but it's clear that the great preponderance of cases, and deaths, are concentrated--at least as of now--in dense urban centers, most particularly Wuhan, Milan, Seattle, Madrid, and New York City. This crisis is the right moment for the world to reconsider the conventional wisdom that denser cities are better cities.[...]

The threat of pestilence has been prevalent throughout urban history. Cities, noted the historian William McNeil, are inherently "unhealthy places" when faced with fateful encounters with pathogens. Even in ancient Rome, Alexandria, and, later, the great cities of the Renaissance, plagues repeatedly devastated urban populations, particularly those most integrated into global trade.

Posted by at April 2, 2020 11:23 AM

  

« WHY THEY CALL IT THE CHINESE VIRUS: | Main | THE LEMMING LOVES THE CLIFF: »