SAN FRANCISCO — Rory Cox shudders each time he steps outside the doors of his YuBalance fitness studio.
“It’s a damn ghost town,” said Cox, 37, whose three studios have seen an 80% decline in business since the novel coronavirus hit in March. “My number one marketing tool is people walking by. If they’re not out there, you lose.”
Cox, like many of those he represents as founder of the San Francisco Small Business Alliance, loves this iconic and iconoclastic city, a place where tech start-ups have brought both great riches and staggering inequality.
But if San Francisco, which this week joined much of California in a mandatory three-week lockdown, isn’t able to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, he, along with his wife, Shala, and their 5-year-old son, may pack up and head to a small Virginia town where his mother lives and start over.
“If this city doesn’t work hard to rebuild after the winter, you’ll have more boarded-up shops, more homeless people in doorways, more break-ins,” he said. “Detroit was the richest city in America in the 1950s. We could be candidates for that kind of fall.”
With the COVID-19 vaccine beginning to roll out, how the biggest cities in the United States — economic engines and cultural cauldrons such as New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Miami — return from the deadliest global health crisis in a century may in some ways foreshadow how the United States bounces back.
An altered future seems inevitable. Just over half of those polled in September by the Pew Research Center said they expect their lives will remain changed in major ways after the pandemic. For some, that has meant moving; a June Pew survey revealed one in five said the outbreak made them or someone they know change residence.
But despite the budget shortfalls plaguing nearly every major city due to the pandemic, urban planners, economists and architects share a resoundingly positive consensus. They say that buoyed by a younger demographic drawn to jobs, social opportunities and public services, cities will survive this crisis much as they did the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the terrorist attacks on 9/11, an echo of European capitals' resilience after the bubonic plague of the 1300s and cholera outbreak of the early 1800s.
Some even posit that a year from now the United States might be in the midst of a new Roaring ‘20s, a reference to giddy good times that followed the Spanish Flu.
Economists at the University of California, Los Angeles, released a study last week predicting a “gloomy winter” would be supplanted by a leap in gross domestic product from a weak 1.2% in the current quarter to 6% by next spring, with more growth in sight.
Post-pandemic city life could be more green, less expensive
Part of that growth will depend on how quickly and effectively cities pivot in the wake of a landscape-altering pandemic. A lot of that will depend on how fast municipal financial coffers, depleted by lost real estate and sales tax revenue, fill back up or whether federal aid comes to the rescue.
Consider these possible best-case-scenario changes — most driven by employees continuing to work at least part-time from home — that experts say could come to our urban centers as COVID-19 hits the nation’s rearview mirror:
— The need for commercial real estate shrinks, with some office spaces converted into living quarters. A boom in available housing drives down ownership and rental costs, revitalizing downtowns.
— Ridership grows for improved public transportation systems, as flexible work schedules mean a move away from traditional commuting hours and increased demand for all-day access.
— Parks mushroom across cities as residents crave more open spaces as a reaction to both pandemic-era social distancing habits and more time spent outdoors over the past year.
— Restaurants roar back as the need to socialize returns, leaning heavily on new habits that include using sidewalks and parking spots as outdoor eating options.
A bit less clear, experts add, is the prospect for social activities that formerly implied shoulder to shoulder contact with other patrons. Bars, concert halls and even museums likely will have to take a wait and see approach to operating their businesses.
But if managed correctly, the fundamental and enduring lure of city life could be at the heart of the nation's recovery, said Janette Sadik-Khan, former commissioner of New York’s Department of Transportation and principal with Bloomberg Associates, a philanthropic consulting group funded by former New York mayor and one-time presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.
“There are so many opportunities following the pandemic not just to restore what wasn’t working before, but to move in a new direction,” she said, adding that the “energy, excitement and sense of place” offered by major cities means there will be a natural desire to return to them.
“Our streets can be used for so much more than moving and parking cars, such as front yards for residents or dining areas for restaurants,” she said.
Cities will change based on just how much we work from home
Urban experts all agree on one thing: all of these changes will be influenced directly by the degree to whether working from home becomes ingrained as a new normal.
While some businesses, notably technology companies, have signaled a permanent retreat from an office setting, most experts predict a hybrid model.
“The answer to just how many days we return to an office will drive a lot of change,” said Christopher Mayer, professor of real estate at the Columbia University Business School in New York.
For San Francisco, as with other major American cities, the question "seems to be, ‘What is the value of a city after a pandemic?’” said Ted Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist. “A major worry for us is if people who have mastered Zoom and have gotten used to being at home just don’t feel they really need that in-person interaction anymore.”
For the past two decades, this bay city’s boom at the hands of tech giants such as Twitter, Google and Facebook has flooded the city with young workers with better than average salaries craving those very in-person interactions. They spent money on great restaurants, hip cocktail lounges, stylish boutiques and personal training.
If they and their discretionary dollars aren't a part of a post-COVID-19 plan, fitness studio owner Cox may be among those leaving the big city life behind. But for the moment he remains hopeful city officials will listen to merchants like him and empower an urban renaissance that attracts businesses, tourists and new residents to a greener, culturally energized and work-life friendly San Francisco.
“I met my wife here, I started my business here, we started our family here, it’s where we want to be,” said Cox. “Many of us want to keep this city alive and vibrant after this pandemic is over. People don’t move here for Target and Chipotle, they move for the cool small businesses. We need to come back strong, and we'll need help."