[AltruisticGap2]

I understand your sentiment but for me the realization is different.

For me seeing the streets of my capital city completely empty at beginning of lockdown, as well as the trams and buses (even though you could ride them), made me realize that I was living in an environment that is fundamentally not pleasant. That it was people that made it alive.

Without people, I saw that this city which I always thought of as "the place where I can do anything, almost any time of the day" is really just a conglomerate of gray buildings, commerce, lots and lots of roads and noisy traffic, and very little green.

The spell was good while it lasted. That said I am also past 45 now... if I was younger I might still want to come back to a big city when I can in order to have access to more activities.

[lmm]

Wasn't that something we all knew already? People are what make cities worth living in, the point of living in a city is to be close to more people, and that naturally involves some compromises (though I'm all for non-grey buildings and minimising the space devoted to cars - something my city is fairly good at).

[michaelt]

To an extent - but city-dwellers also often deal with the high density by ignoring one another, to a much greater extent than they would in a smaller community.

I've heard city-dwellers claim (perhaps partly in jest) to have spent decades standing with the same people at the commuter rail station every day without giving them so much as a nod or smile, let alone learning their names.

[wayoutthere]

I was living in the center of a major city on the east coast when the pandemic hit. I was renting a 400 sq ft apartment, but that was ok because I really only slept there — the coffee shop nearby was my living room, the park was my backyard, the restaurants my kitchen. That’s city life.

With all of that gone, the 400 sq ft apartment stopped being livable. That apartment wasn’t cheap, but I was able to afford to buy a house in another part of town. So I did — as did every other person in that downtown area that I knew.

Those areas are now severely depopulated to the point it’s not safe to walk around in after dark, despite being one of the nicest areas of town a year ago. Businesses are continuing to fail because their customers keep moving away. City centers will be absolutely dead for a decade or more. People are underestimating the long term impact to cities because office workers aren’t coming back en masse any time soon either — if ever. People are what makes a city great, and they’re not coming back for a long time.