[mdaidc]

I am personally betting 80% of the people that left NYC will be back. Plus a lot more that will move to NYC for the first time.

It sounds great to live in a cottage... but once you realize there's nothing interesting going on there, and you essentially live your life through a screen and a microphone... it's not what most people want long term.

Google just bought (not rent) an extra building for $2B. They said that when they give new hires a choice, NYC ranks #1 in their preference.

I live in NYC and I can tell you there are more people on the streets than pre-covid. And international travel/tourism is just getting started.

[eggy]

I still go to NYC to do inspections and other work-related tasks, and sure, if you're single and coming from the burbs or out of state, it's your adventure to the big city. I suspect those are the Google employees you are referring to, not native NY'ers. I don't think the 80% will be most of those who left, and I don't see the crowds you say you see compared to pre-COVID. MTA ridership is down 40% or more, and there are less cars, so I am not sure about your perception of more people. Although, I said bucolic, I don't mean a satellite dish on top of a cabin far from civilization, although, I did live in East Java, Indonesia for a year where 40% of the homes had dirt floors. I loved it much more than my apartments in NYC. I live in Nyack, NY now, and it has enough to do and see. I also prefer to do physical activities and see some trees, and be able to see starts in the sky than glaring LED screens full of adverts all around me. I had worked at the Brooklyn Museum in 80s and after living in Brooklyn/Manhattan apartments then, the best thing NYC offered me was the skate circle in Central Park during the Summer, but I also found that in my travels to Montreal, Spain, and all other parts of the world including SE China. All the other supposed benefits of museums, theaters, and film were mainly for tourists. Most of the people I grew up with became cops, garbage men, iron workers, criminals, or died. Times Square was not the Disneyland it is today. I actually preferred the more characterful Times Square of the 70s and 80s, and the NYC when crime dropped in the 80s. Me and my pals were hanging in the subway tunnels decades before the hipsters brought all their fluff down there to have impromptu raves in the 2000s, but I don't think that is still happening, although with law enforcement standing down a lot more, it has more potential again. NYC like most places in the world are becoming homogeneous centers of group think and like, mostly due to the pervasiveness of tech, big tech, and corp. cronyism. All my working-class friends are relatively fit, and aside from the crossfit acolytes, office workers and the population in general when you walk the streets of NYC look a lot less fit than I recall from the 1970s to the 1990s. Modern, urban, cube life is not for me.