COVID-19 is going to have a great many long-term implications that we can’t begin to predict. But one that needs to be considered is a likely big demographic change. Perhaps one of the most important of the coming century.
People are going to begin leaving cities.
A storm of demographics, economics, and technology are going to leave cities smaller than they once were. As a percentage of total population, I would wager that for the first time in generations the percentage of people living in cities in the developed west will begin to ebb and maybe even reverse in the next several years.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has given us a kind of preview of what was likely going to happen soon anyways. Technology, economics, demographic pressures and lifestyle choices are already combining to make living outside of major cities more and more desirable.
The technology of video chat, online meeting rooms, and email has been with us for awhile. Many have used it to work remotely since the early days of the internet. More and more businesses have used it over the last decade, but with this pandemic we are now past the proof phase to a big adoption period. Many of the companies with whom I personally work are embracing this technology and reporting that it is far less disruptive than they previously assumed . In fact they feel that — at least for many of the roles that their business requires — things are better or the same with the person online rather than in the office.
The pandemic has made this technology mainstream. It’s not that it has unleashed anything new, it has just exposed many managers and executives (a group that typically skews older and less tech savvy) to their uses. Necessity isn’t so much the mother of invention as it is the destroyer of objections. These people can’t object to this technology anymore, they have to use it now too; next they are going to ask how they can take advantage of it.
One way that that business leaders and many others will take advantage of this technology will be to reduce their office space costs and begin to allow more workers to work remotely. Another will be that, post-COVID, outsourcing won’t slow down, it’ll increase. More jobs that these leaders thought had to be kept in the building will be moved out of it.
Thus begins the story of the economic and demographic pressure pushing people from cities. Fewer and fewer employees will need to move to a city for their job. They can stay where they are if they are happy there. The number of people moving to cities will be the first sign of the change.
Over time, fewer and fewer types of work will be tied to a metropolis. Many people will still be attracted to cities for cultural, social, or other personal reasons. But with the advent of automated vehicles those the barrier that time had previously represented will be alleviated. More and more city-visitors be able to go the city quickly for a meet-up with friends or to check out the latest play or go to a concert and then just sleep in the car ride home the same day. They could even keep working on the way up — after all, they can stay connected while their car drives them. They can benefit from the city’s amenities without living there.
If a smaller place offers comparative quiet, a sense of community, affordability and safety relative to a city 90% of the time once spends outside and the cost in time and money to go visit one when you do want to go is greatly reduced, why live there?
Another economic and demographic factor is the cost of housing. Despite COVID, Baby-boomers aren’t dying en masse and opening up all this affordable big-city housing for Millennials and GenZers to buy up at reasonable prices. The life-span of baby-boomers will continue to increase and the young will remain locked out of city living. Housing prices will take a brief hit, maybe even a large one after COVID. But in major cities like New York, Toronto, Denver, and Vancouver houses will be no more affordable for the majority of people than they were before the pandemic. The stretching of the cord that ties most peoples’ jobs to a geographic location will open up home ownership to many who simply can’t even dream of it in a city. And future automated vehicles just stretch the cord further, ultimately cutting it entirely.
Clearly, if there is a move out of cities over the next decades, there will be both predictable and unpredictable results. Politically, the reduced power of cities will change how politicians and political parties market their policies. Most likely, reduced physical density will mean more and more social activities will take place online. Who knows what the social or psychology impacts of that could be?
It’ll be untested ground. But it just might be the next big trend in the developed West.