Will people leave the large cities?

[SpaceChampion]

On 6/8/2020 at 11:58 PM, Altherion said:

The counterargument is that there have always been plagues and riots, but cities just keep growing. However, there is a new wrinkle this time enabled by technology: working from home. In the past, this was a perk restricted to a relatively small number of employees, but given that it seems to work reasonably well, corporations might want to save some of the money spent on renting offices and make it more common.

What do people think: will the giant cities shrink a bit (and maybe become more affordable) or will they return to roughly where they were before once a vaccine becomes available?

A working from home tread will lead to a new epidemic of young families moving into to Dutch colonial style houses with a lot of quaint character.  Followed by supernatural violence, attempted exorcisms, and mysterious phone calls coming from inside the house.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Psh, no. I hate not being in the heart of my city. There's nothing better than stepping out of your door, be it 8am or 8pm, and seeing the world cracking around you. I'm only in the burbs to save money, and I plan to move back downtown somewhere again soon. 

[BigFatCoward]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Psh, no. I hate not being in the heart of my city. There's nothing better than stepping out of your door, be it 8am or 8pm, and seeing the world cracking around you. I'm only in the burbs to save money, and I plan to move back downtown somewhere again soon. 

There is a big difference between a 'city' and a major metropolitan area though. I could live in Newcastle, but fuck going back to London, and I wasnt even that central. 

[Zorral]

Most people worked from home in the Plague years and before and after.

It was the 19th century that moved work largely into separate buildings and parts of the cities away from where they lived.

Before that with the apprentice system, extended families, even merchants worked at home, while their wives oversaw and worked other businesses.  Most merchants didn't just trade, but manufactured, etc.

Even in the 19th century people who owned their small businesses like apothecaries and so on, lived in a floor above the shop, or in rooms behind the shop floor.

 

[Galactus]

It's even noticeable in some modern cities that the ground floor was designed for businesses. (eg. mine houses a hairdresser, and it was built in the 60's)