Cities and the Pandemic: Observations and Scenarios

 

Times Square, New York City: April 2020

Regular readers of my blog -- both of you? -- know that in March of 2020, I began a “teaching library” of PowerPoint slides, with notes, and other materials, about the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.  I update that rather large set of materials about once a month.  Since the PowerPoint slides currently number somewhere over 1200, it's easy to get a little lost (though as you'll see, they are organized by topics).

As an urban economist, who's focused quite a bit on housing as well as real estate, transportation, finance, and governance, the future of cities after the pandemic is of intense interest.  Recently I gave two related presentations on this topic.  I've combined those two presentations, and originally it came in at a very manageable 200 slides or so.  It's grown just a bit when I added some slides that had a bearing on some of our discussions during and after the presentations, and some resources and references.

You can download the combined presentation here.

The PowerPoint version clocks in at about 100 MB.  If you are using a phone or a slow connection, or have any other difficulties, here's a pdf version.  The PowerPoint version is much preferred, since it has a number of explanatory notes, and lots of references, attached, that do not appear in the pdf.

Like the larger aforementioned "teaching library," this is a work in progress.  I have already received a number of comments from colleagues, which will be reflected in future versions.  This version, dated October 27, 2020, will be updated from time to time.

To be specific, these slides are based on presentations to the 1818 Society’s  Transport Thematic Group and Urban Thematic Group.  (The 1818 Society is the alumni organization of the World Bank Group.)  The presentation is organized as follows:

• Urbanization, economic development
• The COVID-19 pandemic
• How will the pandemic affect cities?
• Discussion: possible interventions
• What does the future hold?
• A few slides touching on our comments and discussion
• Going deeper: some resources

As always, comments and criticisms, and especially corrections, are always welcome.

By the way, the photo of Times Square nearly empty during New York's lockdown is not my vision of the future of New York, or other large cities.  We see "through a glass, darkly" on several points, and there will be some significant changes, but I argue that cities like New York or Paris or San Francisco or Seoul will not be emptying out.

The Coronavirus at the University of Wisconsin: Two Presentations

 

As regular readers of this blog know, since March 2020 I've been updating a large "teaching library" on the coronavirus pandemic, including how it affects cities and real estate markets.  This material is updated every 2 or 3 weeks.

That library is well over a thousand slides, and a bit much for some readers, so from time to time I'll post some more focused selections from the library.

I've already posted a presentation to Wisconsin's Graaskamp Center graduate students on Bayesian thinking, in general and as applied to analyzing the outcomes from a coronavirus test.

At the end of August I provided some UW colleagues a selection of slides focused on some of the problems the coronavirus poses for universities in general, and Wisconsin in particular.  On October 19 I made a virtual presentation to UW's "Sifting and Winnowing" fall panel on "Urban Development under COVID-19."

You can download the PowerPoint versions of the notes on university challenges here; and the slides from my presentation to the Sifting and Winnowing panel here.

For those with limited download capacity, here are some lower-resolution pdf versions here and here.  The PowerPoint slides have a number of associated notes and links that aren't in the pdf version.

My policy is to make these and other teaching materials freely available for others to use in their own classes and presentations.  A brief acknowledgement is always appreciated, as are comments or corrections.