sees expanded WFH as a force that can revive cities, especially older second-tier ones. This could lead to a more balanced national economy with wider opportunity not concentrated in a few superstar cities.
And contrasting a mythic urban “golden age” against the pending “doom loop” is dramatic, but misleading. America’s metropolitan form and politics are consistently biased against cities, and urban inequality has been persistently high for decades. Cities anchor regional economic prosperity but are surrounded by literally hundreds of politically independent suburbs which reap many economic benefits without fully sharing costs. Cities bear a disproportionate share of those costs—education, poverty, crime, aging infrastructure, a constrained tax and revenue base—reproducing inequality and racial discrimination. Federal and state policies and aid also disfavor cities, making it very hard for them to fight inequality on their own.
Of course, a commercial real estate meltdown will make cities’ problems even harder to solve. A CRE meltdown and attendant city budget and social pressures would be another episode in how badly we treat cities and their residents. But America always has disliked and disfavored its cities, and we shouldn’t view current urban problems through distorting rose-colored glasses that see a lost “golden age” for American cities.