As technology becomes more ubiquitous and their housing becomes more unaffordable, large US cities could enter a cycle of decline.
Almost 15 years ago, I had a finance job in Austin which I did from my apartment in Manhattan. Although I was under constant pressure to move to Texas, I argued that because I worked in finance and media, leaving New York would hurt my career, and I’d have to be compensated for that loss.
In the end, I was able to continue working remotely. Today, however, it would be almost impossible for me to win that argument. Texas has a growing finance industry, and people have successful media careers from everywhere. Which raises a larger question: Is the Era of the Big City over?
I realize that the obituary for the big city has been written time and again over the last several years. First, the claim was that everyone who fled during the pandemic wouldn’t come back — and then they did. Then it was that the work-from-home trend would cause a crash in commercial real estate and tax revenues, leading to an urban doom loop — but so far people are coming back to work, and commercial real estate is holding on.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
Photo by Francesco Riccardo Lacomina/Getty Images