The End Of Cities Means The End Of Economic Growth. We’re Getting There

We’ve all seen reports of an urban exodus now underway. Major American cities are ungovernable and bordering on collapse.

The situation began to unravel with the spread of coronavirus last March, (the virus arrived earlier but the exponential spike in cases emerged around March 10, 2020). It was then followed by extreme lockdown orders, which did not stop the spread but did destroy the economy.

Events took a turn for the worse in late May with the riots in reaction to the George Floyd death. Right around the time that merchants were ready to reopen, their store windows were smashed and buildings were burned, sending shop owners and office workers back into hiding. The riots continued throughout the summer.

A “defund the police” movement sprang up and police budgets actually were cut in many cities. Not surprisingly, crime surged with murders, gun violence, robberies, looting, and assault all on the rise.

By then, many urban residents had had enough. They sold their city homes or just walked away from leases. Car sales soared as city dwellers bought them to get to their new homes in the country. Moving vans were impossible to find because so many people were moving at once.

Conservative estimates are that 1,000,000 people have moved out of New York City alone. The actual number could be higher. The same is true in Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, Baltimore, Chicago, and other major cities.

In case you thought that exodus might stabilize, it didn’t. A new spike in coronavirus cases in November and December was the last straw.

This has all happened so quickly, few have had time to internalize the implications. This article spells things out.

Cities are the greatest wealth-creating engines in the history of civilization. The word “city” is cognate with the Latin word “civis” which is the root of civilization.

Cities are concentrations of talent, creativity, finance, research, and capital that are used to generate even more wealth. When you destroy cities, you destroy wealth creation and ultimately destroy the economy. This is one more mega-trend that markets have not priced in.

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