[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.