We already know how much the pandemic has directly impacted people’s lives.
The biggest impact was on the economy.
By mid-2020, more and more American moved from large urban centers to suburbs. They left jobs in the cities and went back to a simpler way of life.
Although many urban areas have started to return to normal, the shocking truth is coming out about big American cities and how the pandemic may everything so much worse.
The True Impact of the Pandemic on the Urban Economy
Many who went to the suburbs ended up staying there. What might have been temporary became permanent.
Places where the economy is based on tourism and seasonal dates became ghost towns, and many associated industries suffered.
In New Jersey, for example, Governor Phil Murphy has urged city residents to stop moving to the country.
In Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker has urged some residents who are buying homes in the countryside to remain in the city instead.
Those requests are well founded.
The entry of people from outside the region can bring risks with respect to disease, and not everyone is glad to see them either.
We have several examples of people who fled the urban centers for their holiday homes for fear of taking COVID, but without knowing that they were already infected ended up passing the disease.
The desperation of some Long Island residents was so great that some were even joking about blowing up bridges to keep city folk out of their suburbs.
Violence grips American cities.
It’s going to get much worse.
Gun homicides for black males soar, as police forces can’t recruit new cops.#ChalkTalk pic.twitter.com/nBwsRbQhCd
— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) December 2, 2022
Property Prices at Risk
Property prices plummeted.
The real estate sector has suffered a fall of more than 400 billion dollars since the pandemic.
The economy has suffered an avalanche that has become a headache for many politicians.
How to deal with all the economic imbalance without raising taxes a lot is a dilemma. Raising taxes will just increase the struggles with inflation.
However, for a portion of society’s tycoons, it’s okay.
After all, they haven’t suffered much from the direct impact of the pandemic by having the advantage of working in the comfort of home in remote mode.
This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in many American cities pic.twitter.com/u90b615eBW
— Nathan Allebach (@nathanallebach) November 30, 2022
The Bottom Line
The internet has drastically changed people’s lives.
Something that was imaginable before her, today everything revolves around the internet and it’s increasingly possible to work online.
With the pandemic, people’s lives and displacement happened so quickly that today it directly impacts the economy and structures of urban centers.
Not everything works well at a distance and many sectors such as education have suffered as a result. Cities are no longer places that many people want to live or work, and they’re becoming so full of crime, dirt and rats that many people would rather just stay in the suburbs or the country.
