Moving away from cities

The pandemic is forcing much work to become more virtual. People are now centering their lives more on home and family, and social structures are rearranging.

It’s not clear that everyone will want to back to a world of commuting and office buildings. As people learn how to better work at home, they will gradually see advantages that outweigh the disadvantages.

If so, then after the pandemic is over, we may start to see a decisive and permanent shift. People will move away from geographic areas that privilege work life, toward areas that privilege home life.

There could therefore be a permanent drop in population places like New York City, which are all about the advantages of urban density, including access to high paying jobs. Instead, people might migrate to the midwest, where housing is both larger and cheaper.

If you can buy a big house for not so much money, and still hold down a high paying job while spending quality time with your family, why wouldn’t you?

One thought on “Moving away from cities”

  1. We are almost in the reverse position. We live out in a small commuter village. I can cycle to my workplace in 10 minutes, but my wife has to commute 50 minutes into the city.

    We figured that if one of us was going to have an annoying commute, we may as well stay at the end that has more affordable housing. And yet, on some level we do want to move back to the city.

    It is not for the work that we want to live in the city, but the social life. There are far more different societies and niche clubs. There are regular events that we want to attend, but have to decide, is it worth it? Can I be bothered with the travel (after a day of work)? Do I want to pay the train fare (on top of any event fees)? Do I want to spend the evening chattin while keeping a close eye on the time (don’t want to miss the last train)?

    I think the draw of the city is much more than just jobs. And even with this pandemic, I suspect that the benefits of the city will be around for a while. We are not living in Ready Player One yet.

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