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.