The death of the city
Teleworking, not the coronavirus, is making urban
living obsolete.
By AITOR
HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES, KALINA OROSCHAKOFF AND JACOPO BARIGAZZI 7/27/20, 4:02 AM CET
Illustration
by Lucille Clerc for POLITICO
Some 700
years ago, the Tuscan town of Siena was a burgeoning banking and
proto-industrial powerhouse with over 50,000 inhabitants — a population
surpassed only by medieval “mega-cities” like Paris, London and Milan.
But then,
in 1348, just when the thriving city was in the prime of its golden age,
Siena’s prosperity was brought to a sudden halt by the Black Death. In just a
few years, the city lost 60 percent of its population and entered into a steep
decline, falling into obscurity. It took until the 20th century for it to
recover its pre-pandemic size.
COVID-19
isn’t nearly as deadly as the medieval bubonic plague, but the social and
economic upheaval it’s caused is already leaving physical marks on modern
cities in Europe: Once-busy business districts have emptied out as people opt
to work from home. Shops and restaurants have closed. Public transport has
slowed down.
There’s
also reason to believe this pandemic could have an even more lasting impact
than its predecessors. For the first time since the earliest cities emerged in
the Fertile Crescent some 6,000 years ago, concentrated urban centers no longer
have a monopoly on the economic and cultural connections that make
civilizations tick forward.
The evening rush hour at London's Waterloo
Underground station took on a very different appearance in May, as a nationwide
lockdown kept most residents at home | Isabel Infantes/AFP via Getty Images
For many
workers worried about the coronavirus — and employers looking to cut costs
during the economic crisis that has followed — technologies like video
conferencing, shared documents and instant messaging provide viable
alternatives to high-rise office buildings.
Meanwhile,
services like video streaming and social media and websites like Reddit and
Twitter offer a taste of the cultural effervescence and community that has
drawn so many to the big city over the centuries. You don't even need a bar or
club to meet the love of your life: Apps like Tinder, Bumble or Grindr are
happy to link you to a potential mate.
“This
pandemic has the potential to really affect cities,” said Peter Clark, a
professor of European urban history at the University of Helsinki. “If there
isn’t a second wave, the changes may be far fewer than people are speculating.
But if there is, we could see the European model of the ‘cultural city’
seriously affected.
“Because of
deindustrialization, since the 1980s, we’ve had a shift to the service sector
in order to maintain urban prosperity,” he added. “The pandemic poses a direct
threat to that model.”
Ghost towns
There’s no
question whether the pandemic has transformed working life.
In the
early spring, as the coronavirus spread through Europe, government restrictions
forced all but essential workers such as health and supermarket workers to work
from home to keep new infections at bay. Industrial demand slowed or shut down
completely as purchases of cars and other products collapsed.
Before the
lockdowns, teleworking was not particularly common in most European countries.
According to data compiled by Eurofound, just 11 percent of Germans and 8
percent of Italians “occasionally” worked remotely in 2015.
But as the
crisis progressed, workers and businesses adjusted remarkably quickly to the
new reality. Government, corporate and other meetings shifted online; classes
were taught virtually; e-medicine and virtual therapy took off.
The
question now is whether these new behaviors will stick — or whether most people
will return to their offices as soon as they can.
An elementary school substitute teacher in
Arlington, Virginia, switched from teaching in classrooms when teachers were
absent to educating teachers on how best to connect with their students via
digital platforms | Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Stanford
University economist Nicholas Bloom, an expert on teleworking, says that while
it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to work from home indefinitely, between 50
percent and 60 percent of the population would be able to keep at it.
“A third of
the working population — office workers, senior management — can telework 100
percent of the time. Another third — clothing designers, real estate agents,
scientific researchers — can do it most of the time, but will sometimes need to
be onsite. And another third cannot do it at all: Most of these people are
lower-paid service-sector workers, but you also have higher-range jobs like
those held by dentists, surgeons, pilots.”
Bloom says
it’s still too early to tell how intense the impact of the pandemic will be,
but that it’s unlikely that office workers will want to go back to business as
usual, even if a cure or a vaccine is developed.
“The
skyscrapers and office buildings in the city centers that used to be our most
valued real estate have become places people avoid out of fear of infection,”
Bloom said. “I don’t see people growing comfortable with packed subway trains
and elevators, and firms aren't going to want to open and close every time
there’s a wave.”
Chairs sit empty in the bright outdoor space of
an office park in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. |
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s the
fear of the virus that keeps people at home,” said Sven Smit, senior partner at
McKinsey & Company and co-chair of the McKinsey Global Institute. He added
that while it was too early to be certain the shift would stick, “the tendency
[for longer-term change] is there.”
Companies
have already taken notice of the opportunities for cost-cutting. A new report
from Credit Suisse indicates that office space rental income loss has “so far
been limited.” At the same time, however, “executive boards — including those
of large global corporations — have identified the latent potential to make
savings and are already looking to reduce the amount of space they use.”
Commercial
property investments fell by an average of 44 percent across Europe between the
middle of March and the end of May, according to figures released by BNP
Paribas Real Estate last month; the decline was especially notable in Ireland,
where the Irish Times reported that commercial property deals slumped by 79
percent during that period.
A conference room at Seattle's Rover.com
headquarters sits empty, with employees working from home in March | John Moore/Getty
Images
In a sign
the trend is likely to continue, tech companies like Twitter and Google have
announced plans for their employees to continue working remotely, and a new
survey conducted by Germany’s Ifo Institute shows that 54 percent of businesses
want to make greater use of home offices henceforth.
Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects half the company’s workforce to be
working from home in the next decade — and that employees who moved to less
expensive areas would see their salaries cut to reflect the cost of living.
Michel
Serafinelli, an economics lecturer at the University of Essex, said that the
value of office space could be expected to decline. “Why rent a big office that
only a few workers will be able to use at a time, and only on certain days each
week?”
COVID-flight
The end of
the office, should it come to pass, would transform the urban landscape.
Workers, unshackled from their morning commute, will be free to gravitate to
suburbs and the countryside.
Europe has
a long tradition of rich city-dwellers fleeing plagues to the countryside,
leaving the poor and working class behind. In Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century
literary landmark, "The Decameron," wealthy Florentines escaped to
the Tuscan countryside to hide from the Black Death.
During the
coronavirus crisis, urban elites in hard-hit places like Spain and France left
the city for greener and safer pastures. Former Spanish Prime Minister José
María Aznar traveled to his holiday villa in Marbella rather than ride out the
lockdown in Madrid.
If there
are further waves of the coronavirus or home-working continues to proliferate,
that trend could easily stick. Why pay big-city rents for an undersized
apartment if you can pursue an equally attractive career from a house in the
hills? And from the employer’s point of view, why pay big-city salaries if you
can source the same talent for cheaper, even if you never or rarely see your
employees in person.
But even if
teleworking does become ubiquitous, not everybody will be able — or will want —
to flee to the suburbs and the country. And those who stay behind may find the
city they call home has become a very different place.
Paulina Mansz, a group fitness instructor in
Arlington, Virginia, leads a workout session online, as her two sons — home
after schools closed — lend a hand (or a foot) | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP
via Getty Images
“Cities are
almost certainly going to become cheaper, because more spaces become
available,” Bloom said. “That might help address the affordability crisis we
see in urban centers ... but that’s going to leave quite a vacuum.” Artists, he
added, “might move into the vacant spaces, but they don’t spend much money, and
that’s quite a problem for cities that rely on revenue to offer services.”
Businesses
are already suffering from the knock-on effects of emptier business areas and
city centers. Shops, restaurants and other services that depend on corporate
and other clientele are reeling from the pandemic’s economic impact.
“The
restaurants where executives go out to lunch, the cafés where secretaries grab
their cappuccino, the retail shops where workers shop on their breaks… If the
offices go, we can plausibly expect urban expenditure to drop by a third,”
Bloom said. “That’s a hit which most commercial spaces can’t take.”
In
Brussels’ European Quarter, the disappearance of the Eurocrats and office
workers who used to flood Rue de la Loi and the Schuman Roundabout already led
to the closure of one of the area’s most popular cafés. While the recent easing
of lockdown restrictions granted local bars and pubs a reprieve,
social-distancing requirements kicked the stool from under their business
model; many worry they won’t make it through the year.
A tourist wearing a face mask visits Brussels'
eerily quiet Grand Place in March, as the country entered lockdown to prevent
the spread of the coronavirus | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
With the
departure of white-collar workers and the loss of many service jobs, the
demographics of cities would also change.
The uneven
impact of the teleworking shift is evident in recent analysis from the
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, which shows that while 30
percent of workers across the OECD region can fully adjust to remote work, the
likelihood decreases for those who don’t have any education beyond high school,
“and with lower levels of numeracy and literacy skills.”
With fewer
commercial taxpayers, and a greater proportion of poorer, possibly unemployed
residents, city governments would likely see a drop in their tax revenue, and
that could ultimately affect public services.
“While
there’s high ridership on public transportation, governments tend to invest
heavily in it,” explains University of Essex economist Serafinelli. “But when
it drops, municipalities have less resources or incentive to do so, and with
less investment, there’s often less public interest in using it. It becomes a
spiraling situation.
“The same
thing happens when workers leave an area: Restaurants and shops close because
there are no customers, and the lack of attractions means that few have any
reason to go there afterward,” he added. “Combating that situation requires
careful calculation and investment.”
Rural
opportunities
To be sure,
decamping to the countryside is easier said than done — especially for
urbanites who are used to entertainment and convenient living. Instagram,
Facebook and TikTok might be febrile sources for mashups and memes — but they
can’t capture the magic of a live performance or pull a perfect cappuccino.
Rural areas
don’t have the infrastructure modern city dwellers have come to expect, said
Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the Greek president of the Committee of the Regions.
“How can
you work in a rural area even if you work from home, without having broadband?”
he said. “How can you raise your kids if you don’t have proper schools? How can
you deal with the coronavirus if you don’t have adequate hospital services?”
The fate of
cities will depend to a large extent on decisions made by policymakers.
As EU
leaders promise a €750-billion coronavirus recovery fund alongside the bloc’s
next seven-year budget, regional authorities are keen to ensure Brussels’
stimulus programs don’t just help major cities but Europe’s forgotten
backlands, too.
According
to Eurostat data from 2018, 44.8 percent of the EU population lives in the
city, 36 percent in so-called intermediate areas such as towns and suburbs, and
19.2 percent in rural areas.
A police officer in Barcelona searches for
residents violating the stay-at-home order in March | David Ramos/Getty Images
Tzitzikostas
said EU funding should go toward key investments such as building much-needed
transport and digital infrastructure in rural areas. “The EU needs to tackle
the issue,” he said.
The
coronavirus crisis helped demonstrate that thanks to digital technologies,
there are alternatives to the city, said Birgit Honé, a regional minister of
federal and European affairs and regional development in Lower Saxony in
northwest Germany.
That’s
opening up “opportunities to improve rural areas,” she said, by coming up with
incentives for startups and other businesses to move the countryside, for
example. “We now experienced that you can live differently,” she added.
A
redistribution of Europe’s population to provincial cities and rural areas
could transform many less wealthy, interior regions, according to Serafinelli,
the economist.
“If there’s
a good enough broadband connection and train link to get to the capital a few
times a month, one could foresee many moving out to secondary cities and a job
multiplier effect occurring,” he said.
“These
formerly urban workers would support the local barista when they get their
after-work drink, maybe call in an architect to redo their provincial home,
start a small business … This shock could create a lot of jobs.”
‘Cities
will have to change’
Not
everybody is convinced that the coronavirus will — or at least, should — mean
the end of the vibrant city center.
Giuseppe
Sala, the mayor of Milan, one of the cities most affected by the coronavirus,
told POLITICO that while he sometimes dreamed “of staying in my house in
Liguria,” he didn’t think cities would be seriously threatened by the pandemic
in the long term.
“Already 30
years ago we were debating people being fed up with cities, and reality has
shown this was not the case,” he said.
He allowed,
however, that the health crisis is forcing cities — already under pressure from
climate change, air pollution and other environmental hazards — to rethink
their offerings. “Cities will have to change,” Sala said.
As regional
authorities gear up their campaign to reinvigorate rural communities, cities
aren’t sitting still: They’re launching initiatives aimed, in part, at
offsetting the impacts of the coronavirus and retaining their wealthier
residents.
Milan
installed new bike lanes, made available thousands of square meters for shops
to install outdoor spaces so people can maintain social distance, and put in
place new energy-efficiency measures — moves geared toward making the city more
attractive.
A woman takes advantage of wide-open bike lanes
in central Milan in May | Miguel Medina/AFP via Getty Images
As part of
her successful reelection campaign, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo rolled out
ambitious plans to make city life more local and slow-paced. Paris, like Milan,
rolled out new bike schemes and reclaimed streets to allow for people to move
around without crowding.
“Cities
have to be better, and need to offer better quality of life, air and road
security, but the coronavirus crisis will put more pressure on going forward
with these policies of making a city that is good to live in,” said Brussels
Alderman Bart Dhondt.
“City life
is much more than just your job: It's the cultural, social network that
exists,” he added. “We have to make an effort to get people to stay, to get
people to come back.”
Serafinelli
believes cities will evolve as skilled workers start going to the office only
twice per week, or a few (consecutive) days per month. “To the extent that
there will be less traffic and pollution, cities can actually become even more
attractive. New startups can be attracted by the cheaper rent for office
space.”
He
predicted that the mix of in-office and home-working will allow most major
cities to continue to draw wealthy workers: High-tech and knowledge-intensive
services are likely to remain in order to at least partially retain the
face-to-face contact that spurs creativity.
Speaking
from personal experience, Serafinelli said academia is one of many fields where
Zoom can be used to implement a project, “but the creative ideas most often
come from random conversations with colleagues in the coffee room.”
Even if
cities don’t fade away, pandemics like COVID-19 — which experts say are slated
to become more common as global warming increases — have the potential to
reshuffle fortunes.
Siena lost
out to Florence and Milan. Urban areas in Europe that have weathered the crisis
better than others may become more attractive, while others that fared poorly
in protecting their populations may become less so.
An aerial view of Sergels torg, the most central
public square in Stockholm, in March | Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images
“Stockholm
is a city that may lose out in this crisis,” said Serafinelli. “It’s a
high-tech cluster that has been very attractive in the past decade or so, but
the patterns of mobility of skilled workers might be influenced by the
perception that the Swedish approach to COVID was too risky, and they may start
opting for the security of places like Zurich, Munich and Berlin instead.
“London,
Munich, Amsterdam, Berlin were the high-tech clusters before COVID, and the
motors of European innovation,” he added. “To a large extent, they will remain
so.”
According
to a McKinsey report on the future of work, 48 dynamic cities, including
Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Munich and Paris, are home to just 20
percent of Europe’s population but accounted for 43 percent of GDP growth and
35 percent of job growth in the past 20 years.
“There is
always enormous competition between cities,” Clark, the historian, said. “It
will be interesting to see which cities and urban regions come out stronger
from the pandemic.”
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