The fundamental driver towards cities is a winner-take-all economy. When markets strongly favor the winners and flush out the losers, people have a strong ince

The fundamental driver towards cities is a winner-take-all economy. When markets strongly favor the winners and flush out the losers, people have a strong incentive to be near the winners, in hopes that they'll be one of them (or at least able to ride their coattails). When markets are stagnant or divided into lots of local winners, it favors decentralization, suburbs, and rural areas. It was like this in the 1970s and 1930s as well, as well as the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. Right now everybody who's not making stuff directly useful for the pandemic is a loser, and most of the few winners positioned their products years ago and lucked into the COVID boom. There's no incentive to be near cities, because there's not a whole lot of innovation or economic revolution happening. That'll change very quickly if the economy comes roaring back, particularly if accompanied by major technological or social changes that open up new markets.