11 ms·

A Vision of Post-Pandemic New York

salvagedcircuit 7y ago
After all of this passes, what I think NYers will finally take from this is increased personal space, albeit minor increased personal space, and a greater adoption of contact-less methodology. If anything, it will give NYers more appreciation for soap and filtration. People will probably buy more house portable air filtration equipment than ever before. That and the MTA better finish their NFC payment system pronto and pay for a regular cleaning staff.
mapleoin 7y ago
> Most of all, there will be an exodus of elderly residents. What is this based on? Just because the outbreak is worse in New York now, does that mean it can't be like that somewhere else?
- nutjob2 7y ago
  It's probably based on the fact that this virus is a coronavirus, and there are 4 other coronaviruses that are endemic, seasonal and to which we do not gain a lasting immunity after infection. Given that the probable mortality rate for people over 70 is 10% or 15% for this virus, and that any vaccine will not be anywhere near 100% effective for 100% of the population, not living in a densely packed big city is entirely rational.
  - threatofrain 7y ago
    Do the elderly not wish to watch after the younger generations? Because schools are disease labs.
    - nutjob2 7y ago
      If it meant a 1 in 7 chance of dying, then I'd say no.
m_ke 7y ago
Biggest change will be the loss of small businesses, even more vacant storefronts. If there is an exodus, it will be of blue collar workers to states like Pennsylvania.
- tartoran 7y ago
  Yes, small businesses will be hit hard and many will evaporate. But we’ll see lots of regrowth afterwards if landlords lower the rents, which should make sense if they don’t want to keep their properties vacant.
  - vrinstan 7y ago
    Landlords will lower their prices if they have lower costs or if the offer is greater than the demand. I don't see any of the two happening in big cities.
    - tartoran 7y ago
      I am trying to understand what types of lower costs would the landlords need, property taxes? Those won't go down for sure but would it make sense to keep their properties vacant? I'm failing to see how this makes any sense. Still, I don't know much about what landlords have to deal with and how much sense it makes to them. The offer will intuitively grow as there are more empty places but they may want to game that. It may be part of the problem and why we see lots of empty commercial spaces. If you live in NY it is quite disheartening to see empty storefronts on main streets, it adds to the depressive landscape. I think they may have become more than greedy and charged more than what the places were worth and now in the downturn are in a bind: lower prices and see a lot of the property generate rent (but that would force them to lower their current profitable rentals as well) or keeping it as it is.
      - klodolph 7y ago
        From what I understand, the situation has become more complicated than the scenario of “landlord owns property, wants to make money on rent”. It’s now, “landlord simultaneously rents space to tenants and sells interest in the property to investors.” Because the landlord is dealing in two markets simultaneously, the optimal decision for the landlord may look inefficient if you look at a single market. The empty storefronts are bad, for sure. But to the landlord, reducing rent in order to generate additional income may revalue the property and put it underwater, which triggers clauses in the deals with investors and banks. And as far as I can tell, the whole thing is driven by how balance sheets can be presented to investors and banks, as much as it is driven by how properties can be rented to businesses. My personal take is that this system killed SoHo. I also don’t understand anything about real estate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
kryogen1c 7y ago
probably the same thing it looked like after SARS, h1n1, and ebola, and all of the great pandemics a little further in the past. which is to say we were already living in that time. its not that people forget, its that no one wants to remember. things are the way they are wanted to be. this is what we want. coronavirus was dangerous in 2019, and still no one cared. our worldwide risk vs reward function appears to have a time window of about 3 days.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Nothing resembles this. We haven't had nationwide lockdown in a century. We haven't had folks hanging on published death count; wearing masks in public. Being negative for the sake of it, is adding nothing to the discussion.
  - kryogen1c 7y ago
    negative I surely am, but if I had to place a bet about sweeping worldwide changes in pandemic mitigations, I know which side id bet on. this is not negativity for its own sake, we have a clearly demonstrated pattern of behavior. hows that climate change mitigation coming? you say a century like its prehistoric - that's barely more than 1 person ago. EDIT: to further prove my point, you didn't respond to the part of my post where I said we clearly saw this coming in 2019. it exactly disproves your point - we DID see national lockdowns, we just didn't care.
    - jimhefferon 7y ago
      > we clearly saw this coming in 2019 The overwhelming majority of people, the common person on the street, did not see it coming. A week or two before my state got locked down I was at a meeting and for Other Business I said we need to establish how to hold next week's meeting online. Everyone there looked down at their hands, clearly thinking they were in the presence of a nut. Finally someone said, in the tone you talk to your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving who is a Fox News nut, "Well if a lockdown would ever happen we can email about it then."
josephorjoe 7y ago
Seems a bit early for weird dystopian fantasies about populations segregated by covid-19 immunity status. Suggest the author go read Poe's Masque of the Red Death[1]. NYC will change and adapt. But from the perspective of someone living hear stuck in my apartment for the last few weeks, I wouldn't predict a mass exodus of older new yorkers. They are a pretty stubborn lot who live here for a reason. Maybe if we get recurring waves of large scale infections they would leave, but at that point, so would most people who could. I would predict more wealthy families with school age children who have been considering the suburbs will likely leave, but a percentage of them leave every year. I think one of the more likely and immediate impacts will be closings (as in going out of business) of many restaurants, delis, and bars and financial hardship for everyone who worked for them. I got a request from a local restaurant I've been to exactly one time to donate to a GoFundMe to save the restaurant. I'm not sure what to say about that... Doesn't feel like a reasonable 'ask' to me. The place is good, but not sure my current priority for charitable donations should be a 30 seat restaurant with $35 entrees. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1064/1064-h/1064-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1064/1064-h/1064-h.htm
- thinkmassive 7y ago
  Speaking of Masque of the Red Death, Cory Doctorow created a novella of the same name as a tribute to Poe's original story: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/ https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-r... Cory is the guest of first Short Story Club event, which happens tomorrow evening! https://www.shortstory.club/ https://www.shortstory.club/
- subpixel 7y ago
  Not wealthy, but left NY for the South three weeks ago with wife and kid and are 100% open to never returning (other than to collect belongings), depending on employment circumstances. Like many, we both are somewhat insecurely employed in our well-paying white collar jobs.
- esotericn 7y ago
  > not sure my current priority for charitable donations should be a 30 seat restaurant with $35 entrees. Doesn't this illustrate the issue with market decision making in general? Rationally wouldn't you want to go on funding the things you wish to happen / enjoy in equal proportion to before the crisis, if the money flows are still the same (e.g. you can still 'virtually' tip the waitress at your fancy restaurant etc?)
popeispop 7y ago
I'm not sure the author knows vaccines exist... In 18 months or less there will very likely have a vaccine, of course it will impact NYC, but it's not this mad max scenario. Legit don't know how some people can get published in big websites such as this with such garbage content.
- Cerium 7y ago
  I would not count on it. There are other coronaviruses and we don't have vaccines for them. Of course I'm hopeful, but not ready to count the chicken here.
  - Ericson2314 7y ago
    We had previously been divesting in this type of vaccine research for years, so I remain optimistic now that we are actually trying we'll get better results.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    We don't make vaccines just for fun. It's quite expensive to do so and vaccinations, however safe, still have a little risk. You don't have to vaccinate against the other corona viruses because they don't pose a significant risk.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  > In 18 months or less there will very likely have a vaccine I see this repeated endlessly but I can't track down where it came from. Do you have a source?
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    I think it's an optimistic extrapolation from "it'll take at least 12–18 months to get a vaccine"—for example, > “Like most vaccinologists, I don’t think this vaccine will be ready before 18 months,” says Annelies Wilder-Smith, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That’s already extremely fast, and it assumes there will be no hitches. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/when-will-coronavirus-vaccine-be-ready https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/when-will-coro... )—to "we'll almost certainly have a vaccine in 12–18 months".
paulgb 7y ago
I'm really interested/worried about what the transit situation will be like post-COVID. New York is one of the few cities in the US where public transit use cuts across class lines to a major extent, but it's also the place where we come into close contact with hundreds of strangers on a daily basis. I just don't see us going back to that in a heartbeat. I'm really hopeful that the city takes this opportunity to build proper infrastructure for people to bike around safely. There just isn't room for everyone to start driving a car.
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  New York is New York if and only if there is dramatically fewer cars. It is simply definitional. Any retreat from public transportation would be astoundingly stupid. And in fact this whole piece is astoundingly stupid. Asian cities are the prior art of density combined with basic public awareness of epidemiology. None of the weird stuff the author talks about happens there to my knowledge.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - coredog64 7y ago
    If it happens, I see it happening not as deliberate policy but as a consequence of consumer preference. The MTA was already on their way to fucked before this happened. Poor policing policies have reduced the social penalties for turnstile jumping. Ridership (and fare intake) has been on the decline. The high cost structure, coupled with lower fare collection means more money has to come from the city/state via taxes, for which there is already stiff competition. IMO, I don't really see the MTA coming back from this. The unions won't let them decrease costs (construction or operational). They don't have the capital to make the improvements that would increase automation, and even if they did they'd have a hell of a time getting that through the operating unions. Making the stations nicer just means you're going to wind up with more police chasing more homeless people, creating more opportunities for police-on-citizen violence caught on video.
    - 7y ago
Havoc 7y ago
Seems a bit far fetched
KoftaBob 7y ago
Opinion columns like this are essentially blog posts. While that's fine, having a big name like Bloomberg stamped on it is confusing to many people, as they'll think this is an actual analyst prediction, which it's not.
alexk307 7y ago
America can barely test everyone who wants a test, I don't see mass anti-body testing with certificates being handed out.
crazygringo 7y ago
I live in NYC, and this is possibly the dumbest article I've read in a long, long time. Old people who live in NYC do so because they love it. They're not leaving. Headquarters aren't going away. If you're in NYC it's for a good reason (access to labor/industry). A "much poorer New York"? Not more so than anywhere else. Develop the strictest test-and-trace? That would require them to get their act together, so no. This isn't a well-managed Asian city. Subway ridership lower? People take the subway because they don't have a choice. Somebody explain to me how people are going to get to work instead. And on and on. The author teaches at a university in Virginia. Reading this article it's hard to imagine he's spent any time here in the city at all.
- downerending 7y ago
  > Old people who live in NYC do so because they love it. They're not leaving. They might not leave more than before, but they do leave. NYC is a very expensive place to live if you're not rich or don't have a high-paying job.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- mtalantikite 7y ago
  Agreed. If anything the people I’ve noticed fleeing the city are young and relatively new transplants, or the wealthy with summer homes. I’d wager that the fair weather New Yorkers will be the ones that might end up leaving permanently. Maybe some of those are older people, but probably not disproportionately. I’d rather the author spend time thinking about what the city could look like as we come out of this to yield a better future for the city. For instance, let’s finally hand over some streets fully to cyclists, so more people can feel comfortable using bikes as a serious mode of transport. Let’s stop subsidizing luxury apartments and malls throughout the city (looking primarily at you Hudson Yards). Can we make it so the trains don’t break when we do need them, so we don’t have to pack shoulder to shoulder on the subways all the time? Life is definitely going to be different in the city, but I’m not mad if my neighborhood stops being a shopping mall for European tourists and can become a regular community of New Yorkers again.
esotericn 7y ago
As a Londoner I find this very difficult to believe and I think the situation is fairly similar across all of the major metropoles. Basically everyone I know is chomping at the bit to get back to the pub and resume life as normal. If there's an antibody test and enough people are infected, then I imagine that those that are immune will just act exactly as before and perhaps even find paranoid folk frustrating to be around. A nonzero and significant fraction of people (I don't condone this FWIW) are still wandering around in the parks, having barbecues etc, because they simply don't want to face the idea of a life in which we are afraid of our common man - it's the essence of metropolitan life. The death of sociality is the death of London.
- standardUser 7y ago
  Nothing wrong with going to the park or cooking food outside, as long as you're maintaining social distance with people outside of your household. The virus doesn't spread by magic.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Ethically there's nothing wrong with it in isolation, but that breaks down if everyone does it because there's not enough room in the parks for people to distance. It's also illegal (not an essential journey or exercise), probably for the reason stated above.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    I believe the issue in London is the parks can get so busy, you can't maintain social distancing. Or at least, some parks can, when there's no coronavirus, and the weather is good, at weekends.
    - mrfusion 7y ago
      Maybe this shows we need more parks.
- michaelt 7y ago
  It all depends on what the outcome is in terms of immunity, vaccines and mutation. If we achieve Polio-style elimination, with a vaccine that confers immunity long enough for the disease to be eliminated - cities like London will absolutely bounce back. But if we end up with Flu-style situation, where immunity last year doesn't mean you're immune this year, and immunity to the strains in New York doesn't mean you're immune to the strains in San Francisco? It's difficult to know what the outcomes from that would be.
bobloblaw45 7y ago
Not limited to New York but I think it would be interesting to see if this experience showed companies how much of their staff can work from home. And if it creates a new work from home trend for a whole new class of workers that weren't able to before. It seems it would be cheaper for both employers and employees.
jshaqaw 7y ago
I’ve been living in NYC since before 9/11 when there was similar prognostication that this was the beginning of the end for NYC. That didn’t happen either.
elbelcho 7y ago
The article doesn't take in account of the possibility of vaccination available in the next year or so. Yes, people will meanwhile die. Yes, there will be short-term segregation. But I highly doubt that, once vaccination is widely available, the city will remain segregated into "safe" zones and poorer "infected" zones. That sounds dystopian at best.
barry27 7y ago
Absurd nonsense.

After all of this passes, what I think NYers will finally take from this is increased personal space, albeit minor increased personal space, and a greater adoption of contact-less methodology. If anything, it will give NYers more appreciation for soap and filtration. People will probably buy more house portable air filtration equipment than ever before. That and the MTA better finish their NFC payment system pronto and pay for a regular cleaning staff.

mapleoin 7y ago

> Most of all, there will be an exodus of elderly residents. What is this based on? Just because the outbreak is worse in New York now, does that mean it can't be like that somewhere else?

nutjob2 7y ago
It's probably based on the fact that this virus is a coronavirus, and there are 4 other coronaviruses that are endemic, seasonal and to which we do not gain a lasting immunity after infection. Given that the probable mortality rate for people over 70 is 10% or 15% for this virus, and that any vaccine will not be anywhere near 100% effective for 100% of the population, not living in a densely packed big city is entirely rational.
- threatofrain 7y ago
  Do the elderly not wish to watch after the younger generations? Because schools are disease labs.
  - nutjob2 7y ago
    If it meant a 1 in 7 chance of dying, then I'd say no.

m_ke 7y ago

Biggest change will be the loss of small businesses, even more vacant storefronts. If there is an exodus, it will be of blue collar workers to states like Pennsylvania.

tartoran 7y ago
Yes, small businesses will be hit hard and many will evaporate. But we’ll see lots of regrowth afterwards if landlords lower the rents, which should make sense if they don’t want to keep their properties vacant.
- vrinstan 7y ago
  Landlords will lower their prices if they have lower costs or if the offer is greater than the demand. I don't see any of the two happening in big cities.
  - tartoran 7y ago
    I am trying to understand what types of lower costs would the landlords need, property taxes? Those won't go down for sure but would it make sense to keep their properties vacant? I'm failing to see how this makes any sense. Still, I don't know much about what landlords have to deal with and how much sense it makes to them. The offer will intuitively grow as there are more empty places but they may want to game that. It may be part of the problem and why we see lots of empty commercial spaces. If you live in NY it is quite disheartening to see empty storefronts on main streets, it adds to the depressive landscape. I think they may have become more than greedy and charged more than what the places were worth and now in the downturn are in a bind: lower prices and see a lot of the property generate rent (but that would force them to lower their current profitable rentals as well) or keeping it as it is.
    - klodolph 7y ago
      From what I understand, the situation has become more complicated than the scenario of “landlord owns property, wants to make money on rent”. It’s now, “landlord simultaneously rents space to tenants and sells interest in the property to investors.” Because the landlord is dealing in two markets simultaneously, the optimal decision for the landlord may look inefficient if you look at a single market. The empty storefronts are bad, for sure. But to the landlord, reducing rent in order to generate additional income may revalue the property and put it underwater, which triggers clauses in the deals with investors and banks. And as far as I can tell, the whole thing is driven by how balance sheets can be presented to investors and banks, as much as it is driven by how properties can be rented to businesses. My personal take is that this system killed SoHo. I also don’t understand anything about real estate ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

kryogen1c 7y ago

probably the same thing it looked like after SARS, h1n1, and ebola, and all of the great pandemics a little further in the past. which is to say we were already living in that time. its not that people forget, its that no one wants to remember. things are the way they are wanted to be. this is what we want. coronavirus was dangerous in 2019, and still no one cared. our worldwide risk vs reward function appears to have a time window of about 3 days.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Nothing resembles this. We haven't had nationwide lockdown in a century. We haven't had folks hanging on published death count; wearing masks in public. Being negative for the sake of it, is adding nothing to the discussion.
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  negative I surely am, but if I had to place a bet about sweeping worldwide changes in pandemic mitigations, I know which side id bet on. this is not negativity for its own sake, we have a clearly demonstrated pattern of behavior. hows that climate change mitigation coming? you say a century like its prehistoric - that's barely more than 1 person ago. EDIT: to further prove my point, you didn't respond to the part of my post where I said we clearly saw this coming in 2019. it exactly disproves your point - we DID see national lockdowns, we just didn't care.
  - jimhefferon 7y ago
    > we clearly saw this coming in 2019 The overwhelming majority of people, the common person on the street, did not see it coming. A week or two before my state got locked down I was at a meeting and for Other Business I said we need to establish how to hold next week's meeting online. Everyone there looked down at their hands, clearly thinking they were in the presence of a nut. Finally someone said, in the tone you talk to your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving who is a Fox News nut, "Well if a lockdown would ever happen we can email about it then."

josephorjoe 7y ago

Seems a bit early for weird dystopian fantasies about populations segregated by covid-19 immunity status. Suggest the author go read Poe's Masque of the Red Death[1]. NYC will change and adapt. But from the perspective of someone living hear stuck in my apartment for the last few weeks, I wouldn't predict a mass exodus of older new yorkers. They are a pretty stubborn lot who live here for a reason. Maybe if we get recurring waves of large scale infections they would leave, but at that point, so would most people who could. I would predict more wealthy families with school age children who have been considering the suburbs will likely leave, but a percentage of them leave every year. I think one of the more likely and immediate impacts will be closings (as in going out of business) of many restaurants, delis, and bars and financial hardship for everyone who worked for them. I got a request from a local restaurant I've been to exactly one time to donate to a GoFundMe to save the restaurant. I'm not sure what to say about that... Doesn't feel like a reasonable 'ask' to me. The place is good, but not sure my current priority for charitable donations should be a 30 seat restaurant with $35 entrees. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1064/1064-h/1064-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1064/1064-h/1064-h.htm

thinkmassive 7y ago
Speaking of Masque of the Red Death, Cory Doctorow created a novella of the same name as a tribute to Poe's original story: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-red-death/ https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/13/the-masque-of-the-r... Cory is the guest of first Short Story Club event, which happens tomorrow evening! https://www.shortstory.club/ https://www.shortstory.club/
subpixel 7y ago
Not wealthy, but left NY for the South three weeks ago with wife and kid and are 100% open to never returning (other than to collect belongings), depending on employment circumstances. Like many, we both are somewhat insecurely employed in our well-paying white collar jobs.
esotericn 7y ago
> not sure my current priority for charitable donations should be a 30 seat restaurant with $35 entrees. Doesn't this illustrate the issue with market decision making in general? Rationally wouldn't you want to go on funding the things you wish to happen / enjoy in equal proportion to before the crisis, if the money flows are still the same (e.g. you can still 'virtually' tip the waitress at your fancy restaurant etc?)

popeispop 7y ago

I'm not sure the author knows vaccines exist... In 18 months or less there will very likely have a vaccine, of course it will impact NYC, but it's not this mad max scenario. Legit don't know how some people can get published in big websites such as this with such garbage content.

Cerium 7y ago
I would not count on it. There are other coronaviruses and we don't have vaccines for them. Of course I'm hopeful, but not ready to count the chicken here.
- Ericson2314 7y ago
  We had previously been divesting in this type of vaccine research for years, so I remain optimistic now that we are actually trying we'll get better results.
- adrianN 7y ago
  We don't make vaccines just for fun. It's quite expensive to do so and vaccinations, however safe, still have a little risk. You don't have to vaccinate against the other corona viruses because they don't pose a significant risk.
umanwizard 7y ago
> In 18 months or less there will very likely have a vaccine I see this repeated endlessly but I can't track down where it came from. Do you have a source?
- JadeNB 7y ago
  I think it's an optimistic extrapolation from "it'll take at least 12–18 months to get a vaccine"—for example, > “Like most vaccinologists, I don’t think this vaccine will be ready before 18 months,” says Annelies Wilder-Smith, professor of emerging infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That’s already extremely fast, and it assumes there will be no hitches. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/when-will-coronavirus-vaccine-be-ready https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/06/when-will-coro... )—to "we'll almost certainly have a vaccine in 12–18 months".

paulgb 7y ago

I'm really interested/worried about what the transit situation will be like post-COVID. New York is one of the few cities in the US where public transit use cuts across class lines to a major extent, but it's also the place where we come into close contact with hundreds of strangers on a daily basis. I just don't see us going back to that in a heartbeat. I'm really hopeful that the city takes this opportunity to build proper infrastructure for people to bike around safely. There just isn't room for everyone to start driving a car.

Ericson2314 7y ago
New York is New York if and only if there is dramatically fewer cars. It is simply definitional. Any retreat from public transportation would be astoundingly stupid. And in fact this whole piece is astoundingly stupid. Asian cities are the prior art of density combined with basic public awareness of epidemiology. None of the weird stuff the author talks about happens there to my knowledge.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- coredog64 7y ago
  If it happens, I see it happening not as deliberate policy but as a consequence of consumer preference. The MTA was already on their way to fucked before this happened. Poor policing policies have reduced the social penalties for turnstile jumping. Ridership (and fare intake) has been on the decline. The high cost structure, coupled with lower fare collection means more money has to come from the city/state via taxes, for which there is already stiff competition. IMO, I don't really see the MTA coming back from this. The unions won't let them decrease costs (construction or operational). They don't have the capital to make the improvements that would increase automation, and even if they did they'd have a hell of a time getting that through the operating unions. Making the stations nicer just means you're going to wind up with more police chasing more homeless people, creating more opportunities for police-on-citizen violence caught on video.
  - 7y ago

Havoc 7y ago

Seems a bit far fetched

KoftaBob 7y ago

Opinion columns like this are essentially blog posts. While that's fine, having a big name like Bloomberg stamped on it is confusing to many people, as they'll think this is an actual analyst prediction, which it's not.

alexk307 7y ago

America can barely test everyone who wants a test, I don't see mass anti-body testing with certificates being handed out.

crazygringo 7y ago

I live in NYC, and this is possibly the dumbest article I've read in a long, long time. Old people who live in NYC do so because they love it. They're not leaving. Headquarters aren't going away. If you're in NYC it's for a good reason (access to labor/industry). A "much poorer New York"? Not more so than anywhere else. Develop the strictest test-and-trace? That would require them to get their act together, so no. This isn't a well-managed Asian city. Subway ridership lower? People take the subway because they don't have a choice. Somebody explain to me how people are going to get to work instead. And on and on. The author teaches at a university in Virginia. Reading this article it's hard to imagine he's spent any time here in the city at all.

downerending 7y ago
> Old people who live in NYC do so because they love it. They're not leaving. They might not leave more than before, but they do leave. NYC is a very expensive place to live if you're not rich or don't have a high-paying job.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
mtalantikite 7y ago
Agreed. If anything the people I’ve noticed fleeing the city are young and relatively new transplants, or the wealthy with summer homes. I’d wager that the fair weather New Yorkers will be the ones that might end up leaving permanently. Maybe some of those are older people, but probably not disproportionately. I’d rather the author spend time thinking about what the city could look like as we come out of this to yield a better future for the city. For instance, let’s finally hand over some streets fully to cyclists, so more people can feel comfortable using bikes as a serious mode of transport. Let’s stop subsidizing luxury apartments and malls throughout the city (looking primarily at you Hudson Yards). Can we make it so the trains don’t break when we do need them, so we don’t have to pack shoulder to shoulder on the subways all the time? Life is definitely going to be different in the city, but I’m not mad if my neighborhood stops being a shopping mall for European tourists and can become a regular community of New Yorkers again.

esotericn 7y ago

As a Londoner I find this very difficult to believe and I think the situation is fairly similar across all of the major metropoles. Basically everyone I know is chomping at the bit to get back to the pub and resume life as normal. If there's an antibody test and enough people are infected, then I imagine that those that are immune will just act exactly as before and perhaps even find paranoid folk frustrating to be around. A nonzero and significant fraction of people (I don't condone this FWIW) are still wandering around in the parks, having barbecues etc, because they simply don't want to face the idea of a life in which we are afraid of our common man - it's the essence of metropolitan life. The death of sociality is the death of London.

standardUser 7y ago
Nothing wrong with going to the park or cooking food outside, as long as you're maintaining social distance with people outside of your household. The virus doesn't spread by magic.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Ethically there's nothing wrong with it in isolation, but that breaks down if everyone does it because there's not enough room in the parks for people to distance. It's also illegal (not an essential journey or exercise), probably for the reason stated above.
- michaelt 7y ago
  I believe the issue in London is the parks can get so busy, you can't maintain social distancing. Or at least, some parks can, when there's no coronavirus, and the weather is good, at weekends.
  - mrfusion 7y ago
    Maybe this shows we need more parks.
michaelt 7y ago
It all depends on what the outcome is in terms of immunity, vaccines and mutation. If we achieve Polio-style elimination, with a vaccine that confers immunity long enough for the disease to be eliminated - cities like London will absolutely bounce back. But if we end up with Flu-style situation, where immunity last year doesn't mean you're immune this year, and immunity to the strains in New York doesn't mean you're immune to the strains in San Francisco? It's difficult to know what the outcomes from that would be.

bobloblaw45 7y ago

Not limited to New York but I think it would be interesting to see if this experience showed companies how much of their staff can work from home. And if it creates a new work from home trend for a whole new class of workers that weren't able to before. It seems it would be cheaper for both employers and employees.

jshaqaw 7y ago

I’ve been living in NYC since before 9/11 when there was similar prognostication that this was the beginning of the end for NYC. That didn’t happen either.

elbelcho 7y ago

The article doesn't take in account of the possibility of vaccination available in the next year or so. Yes, people will meanwhile die. Yes, there will be short-term segregation. But I highly doubt that, once vaccination is widely available, the city will remain segregated into "safe" zones and poorer "infected" zones. That sounds dystopian at best.

barry27 7y ago

Absurd nonsense.