No, Cities Are Not Dying, And They Never Will.
In the most developed world economies the COVID-19 pandemic has driven young people out of cities by the thousands. Remote work and changing priorities have caused a mass exodus from cities like Paris, New York City and Tokyo to rural areas of their respective countries. This information would make it seem as though once this pandemic ends cities will have to come to terms with being exposed for being meaningless when geography is no longer tied to economic opportunity.
The good news for those of us who love cities is that cities are not going anywhere, in fact many are growing. Of course, much of the growth is still being seen in developing economies where living in a city is the best economic choice most people can make. By 2050 cities like Mumbai, Dhaka, Kinshasa, Lagos and Karachi will all be among the top 8 largest cities in terms of population, with each of them roughly doubling in population from where they stand today. Even the current wealthy megacities of New York City and and Tokyo will still see population increases of roughly 4 million people and 2 million people respectively, across the next 30 years.
I understand that for many people this kind of urbanization is not something to be celebrated. Urbanization often conjures a sense of dread for the climate-consious. Many people believe cities have destroyed the planet and continue to cause unsustainable atmospheric pollution. There are too many examples to refute any of this, but I believe that trends in urban planning and consumer preferences can transform our cities into the robust pillars of society that they were always made to be.
One of the top contributors to climate change is, of course, carbon emissions from motor vehicles. In developed nations, many young people in cities tend to not want cars because we know the severity of the climate situation that we’ve inherited. Paris’ desire to become a “15-Minute City”, where all Parisians will be able to access all of their daily needs within a short 15-minute commute either on foot or by bike, is a sentiment that more and more cities are keen to adopt.
I was lucky enough to have grown up in the Washington DC Metro Area which has an unusally robust public transportation system for an American city. I grew up in the Virginia exurbs of Washington DC and never had to drive to work if I did not want to, and when I live in the US I had worked in Virginia, DC and Maryland. A person living in the suburbs of Northern Virginia can go to work in DC, meet a friend for dinner in Maryland and get back home without ever setting foot in a car or a bus.
I currently live in Seoul, South Korea and the public transportation is even more remarkable no doubt due to it needing to service not just the nearly 10 million people that live here but also the broader Seoul Capital Area which is home to ver 25 million people. Seoul is a city that has maintained a stable population through the pandemic despite South Korea’s population decreasing overall in 2020. The key difference between the public transport in the DC Metro Are and Seoul (apart from efficiency and robustness) is how cheap it is. You can travel over 15 kilometers on the Seoul subway system for 2,000 won ($1.81 USD at the time of this writing). Just like in DC, it’s possible to arrive at the airport and get a the way home without a bus or a cab even if you live in a different city (in this case the journey would be from Incheon to Seoul) and it could be faster than driving.
Obviously Seoul and Washington D.C. are plagued with motor traffic that is an ever-present part of life in these cities and many other like them. There is still much that needs to be done about the pollution caused by these cities, but it is important to remember that traffic and pollution are not inherent to cities, but are rather products of our current lifestyle and economy and cities may ironically be the solution to this particular problem.
Admittedly the cities that cause the most pollution like those in China, Pakistan and India are will take decades of aggressive, unrelenting commitment and investment to reform. Most cities still have the capacity to offer their inhabitants a completely car-free lifestyle within the next 30 years if they choose to do so. Some small towns already offer walkability and convenience, but the more demand there is to live and invest in those towns, the more likely they are to see new infrastructural developments that push it closer and closer to becoming a city anyway. This is happening all over the world and I have seen it first-hand in my hometown as it has rapidly added new metro stops and built new commercial and residentital buildings in an effort to create “America’s Next Great City”. I’ve also seen it in Kenya, where most of my extended family lives, as the sprawl of the Nairobi Metro Area increasingly creates new self-sustaining communities that strive to compete with the city proper.
We will likely never have a completely urbanized world. Urbanization is (for most people) a choice that they make for cultural, economic or social reasons and it is not a choice everyone makes. That does not change the fact that urbanization is going to continue for the rest of this century and beyond. Making sure that urbanization is sustainable and equitable is going to be the second most pressing challenge humanity has to solve in my lifetime after climate change. Cities are not going anywhere and I think, once we remove some of their quirks, we’ll all be very thankful that they stuck around.
