Covid, Cities, and Climate

Photo: City in the winter, streets are empty.

The COVID-19 crisis continues to change culture locally and globally within a matter of months, weeks, and sometimes days. As a renter in Boston who escaped to my parents' house in the suburbs, one big question keeps coming up with long-term implications: what's going to happen to the cities?

America's biggest cities, including NYC, LA, and Chicago, have been losing residents over the past few years due to a lack of affordability. That trend is exacerbated by the pandemic with urbanites fleeing amid concerns of infection in high-density hotspots.

Now, with people experiencing life in the suburbs, which is usually cheaper, safer, and more spacious, and companies across the globe learning the benefits of working from home (Twitter announced that its employees will never have to come back to work), workers may decide to continue living out in the suburbs, therefore emptying commercial office buildings.

What follows is that cities will lose local business, and areas which were historically sparse in population will face challenges upgrading their infrastructure. When white-collar city workers permanently flee their downtown offices, cities will change. Workers don't just sit at their desks all day - the flurries of activity before work, during the lunch hour, and after work, support entire communities. Without office buildings, there will no longer be a need for a coffee shop on every corner or streets lined with sandwich shops and bars. This will impact the people who run our local shops, and perhaps entire neighborhoods like Chinatown and the North End in Boston. The mass movement could spur a justice issue: a renewed surge of white flight in the United States.

The Environmental Implications - City vs. Suburbs

So what effect will mass migration have on our environment?

My immediate response would be that it must be more sustainable to keep people in cities. Right? The infrastructure is already there, and to move to the suburbs we'd have to cut out large swaths of land. The suburbs are known for "owning" property that the owners immediately clear-cut and spray with biocides, then build an unreasonably large house that requires exorbitant amounts of material and energy to maintain, when really all they need is a few rooms to sleep, eat, and relax in.

But I really can't find a definitive answer.

Cities are denser - over half the world lives in less than 5% of the Earth's land - and because the real estate is so expensive, residents only take as much as they need (or, in most cases, only as much as they can afford). This leads to less consumption and less energy expenditure. You can come to a logical conclusion that city living is more efficient. Furthermore, being closer to the places you work and play means you don't need (or can't afford) a car in cities. Richard Florida of City Lab and Edward L. Glaeser of City Journal agree that urban residences "emit less carbon" because as the population grows upward, per capita carbon emission declines.

John W. Day and Charles Hall of Scientific American disagree. They point to the reality that the resources cities use to develop infrastructure and maintain high densities of human life are imported. And to keep these resources cheap, they're imported from faraway places and often shipped overseas. Furthermore, any food made in the United States has a better chance of making its way to rural or suburban supermarkets than it does to cities, and any transportation that happens in cities emits more pollutants due to traffic density and engine stalling. What's more, the heat island effect (the hotter microclimate caused by dense air pollution and black asphalt in urban areas) changes local weather patterns, which probably has drastic atmospheric and microbial consequences. My other consideration (though I don't have any data to support this) is that rural areas may work more in tandem with nature. For example, my hometown uses a natural reservoir for our water, limiting the need for intensive water purification or transport. Perhaps the suburbs have a better record of using ecosystem services instead of developing new infrastructure. Of course, NYC's "collaboration" with the Catskill Mountains would be a direct counter to this point.

My Thoughts

I'm going to move back to Boston as soon as I can. My apartment was feeling a bit claustrophobic compared to a house with multiple rooms and a backyard, but I love the energy of the city and don't feel the need to "own" a piece of land. I know it's probable that another virus will plow its way through humanity in my lifetime, and I know that a life in the suburbs is far less likely to touch disease or crime or terrorism than a life in the big city.

But I also know that if I lived in the suburbs, I'd have a bigger natural footprint than I do in my small apartment, and probably a bigger carbon footprint as well since it'd be likely I'd have to trade in my bike for a petroleum-powered car if I lived in a rural area. I love working on ways to become more minimalist and sustainable, and I know it'd be much more difficult to fight consumerism in the culture that a suburban neighborhood perpetuates.

Regardless, I would love to figure this out. Are city dwellings or suburban homes more resource-intensive? Which are the greater emitters of pollutants? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.