Pandemic - NYC America in Transition - five

On the surface, New York City does not look as if it has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has changed. I visited, in December, the day after the first Coronavirus vaccine became available in the United States and a day after a new shutdown order had been put in place covering most New York City restaurants.

The first thing that struck me was how quiet everything seemed. A Tuesday morning, at a time that should have been taken over by the morning rush felt instead like a Sunday morning. After leaving Grand Central, I could have walked down the middle of 42nd St. without much concern for my safety if I had chosen to. The shutdown wasn't complete, but the city looked less than half full.

Lines formed outside bakeries and coffee shops for one customer at a time service. The lines outside churches and soup kitchens were longer and often stretched around the block.

It was a cold morning, and New Yorkers looked comfortable in their masks. In a city this large, with so many people, it is not difficult to imagine the mask becoming as much a part of city fashion as black jeans and a black turtle neck, even after they are no longer necessary as a matter of public health. Why not? A mask, like a winter scarf wrapped around your face, helps keep you warm as the wind sweeps around the city's buildings and meets you head on. A mask is a small burden in exchange for some additional protection from various diseases, not just COVID.

In the early summer of 2020, a friend stopped by my house in central Connecticut and urged me to sell. He said, New Yorkers were looking to get out of the city, because of the pandemic, and they were willing to pay top dollar, sight unseen, to live in a place they considered safer. I was skeptical, but months later there have been several reports indicating people are re-considering their urban lifestyle, not just in New York, but in major cities around the country. And in fact, home prices in many parts of the country are on the rise.

New York will survive the pandemic, just as the rest of the world will. It will look more like it did before the lockdowns began, but COVID-19 has challenged the basic assumptions behind American city life.

If we all can work from home, if there is no need to go to the office each day, if there is no need to be able to walk to work, then what do we do with all the office buildings, the apartments, the food stores, restaurants and other retail that supports the lifestyle?

The pandemic has hurt commercial real estate and there is speculation in the marketplace about transforming urban office space into residential space. It is hard to imagine a world changed so dramatically in about a year's time, but our shared pandemic experience is leading everyone to question life fundamentals.

The thought of transforming cities from places to work into places to live would require urban centers to invest more in improving the general quality of life. Culture and low housing prices would become as important as a convenient work/life balance.

These historical transitions take time. It is unlikely the pattern established over the last century of city life in America is going to change in eighteen to twenty-four months. But several decades from now, we may look back at this moment and say, that's when the communication age fully shifted the way we live.

The world has been changing rapidly since the mid-1990s when personal computers, cell phones and other technologies became attainable for most of the population. The pandemic of 2020-2021 forced us to realize how far technology can take us toward a new way of living, but has yet to show how completely we will embrace it.