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Concrete jumble

Joel Budd: social affairs editor, The Economist

Cities will struggle, but will avoid a mass exodus

No jams, at least

2021 in brief

“Davos Dialogues” take place online in January in place of the usual meeting of the
World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort. A small in-person meeting will be held in
Lucerne in May

IN BIG CITIES, disaster seems always to lurk around the corner. E.B. White, an American
essayist, worried in 1948 that New York could be destroyed by “a single flight of planes
no bigger than a wedge of geese” dropping bombs on it. Great cities have been razed or
have descended into anarchy in a great many films and books, from “War of the Worlds”
to “High-Rise” and “Godzilla”. That a new virus should strike cities so hard does not
seem too surprising.

Covid-19 did not just break out in large metropolises, killing their inhabitants before
doctors knew how to treat the disease. It also induced a protective response that has
been exceptionally hard on cities. When public transport, theatres, nightclubs and