> When people speculate about how the pandemic will change big cities, they mostly talk about the Zooming classes fleeing the Big Smoke. Yet there are only mode

> When people speculate about how the pandemic will change big cities, they mostly talk about the Zooming classes fleeing the Big Smoke. Yet there are only modest signs of this happening so far. Rather, as the pandemic enters its mass-impoverishment phase, another development looks more likely: the new poor will leave big cities. This is the exodus that could reshape urban life in the coming years. “We have entered a new epoch. We are not fully capable of seeing that,” says Saskia Sassen of Columbia University, the urbanist who coined the term “global city”. > Long before the pandemic struck, many poorer urbanites were just hanging on, not living even a downscale version of the Dick Whittington dream of coming to the city and making their fortunes. [..] > When urbanites first lost their jobs this spring, many sat it out hoping for a swift recovery. Now it’s clear that low-wage industries like tourism, restaurants, bars, shopping and the arts (a big employer of the bohemian proletariat) won’t revive anytime soon. If you lose your job in a small town you can probably afford to stay put, but not in premium cities. Falling demand in New York and San Francisco is already pushing down rents. > Compared with the damage from the new poor leaving, working from home should hurt cities less. The metropolis is losing some of its workplace function, but after the pandemic it will regain its networking and playground functions. That means that living in Manhattan, central London or Paris will remain attractive. In fact, these places just keep getting nicer as they push out cars. No wonder that house prices — at or near record levels in London and Paris — have held up better than rents. > Most well-off urbanites will ride out the pandemic, paying rock-bottom interest rates to work from home (or “live at work”, as Miranda Sharp, a trustee at the Centre for Cities, says). A minority of the middle class may have to sell — airline pilots, marketing and advertising executives, conference organisers and the like — but there’s an almost endless supply of rich people around the world waiting to buy pads in top-tier cities.