Page 17 - Delaware Lawyer - Summer 2021

the premium paid for a central location in the downtown core during the pandem- ic.1 While there remains a large premium for a downtown location, the decline is considerable. Notably, commercial real estate values in less dense, auto-oriented cities have not suffered similar declines. Wilmington is a relatively compact city, but it is not highly transit-dependent. It is likely that commercial values have suf- fered, but perhaps not as significantly as denser cities.
One of the largest impacts of the pandemic has been on how, and how much, we travel. At first, all travel — work commutes, shopping trips, busi- ness travel, leisure travel — basically stopped. Car travel fell as remote work took hold, online shopping accelerat- ed, and deliver y of ever ything domi- nated. Virtually all business and leisure travel stopped, threatening the airline industr y.
Trips on public transit, which in- volves many people sitting and standing in close quarters, were eliminated for
all but essential workers who kept the economy and health services function- ing. You may recall that the pandemic was initially thought to be an urban phenomenon that was not a threat to suburban and rural areas. Some went so far as to argue that the New York City subway was the primary transmission mechanism for the virus.2 This proved not to be true, as the virus spread rap- idly to other communities — urban, suburban and rural.
As vaccines have started to put the pandemic in the rearview mirror, hope- fully permanently, people are travel- ing more, but the recovery is uneven. Transit use remains severely depressed, and intercity air travel has increased but remains at lower than pre-pandemic lev- els. Automobile use, on the other hand, is increasing rapidly. Demand for cars, new and used, has increased and road congestion is growing.
Segmentation and Virtual Communities
One feature of the ascendance of digital communications is the ability of people to select with whom they inter- act. This trend has been going on for many years. COVID-19 further in- creased segmentation by greatly reduc- ing random interactions. Now, even as we move past the pandemic, remote work has further enabled people to sort into homogeneous virtual communi- ties, like economist Charles Tiebout’s model of voting with one’s feet.3 This virtual sorting is undermining cohesive interactions among diverse individuals and communities and may compromise creative idea generation that is spurred by communications among people with different perspectives. But are these technology-enabled, pandemic-induced changes immutable?
It is safe to say that the data-driven digital technologies will continue to spur changes in our communities and our businesses, and that the pandemic
has accelerated those changes. Many of those changes will enhance our lives, in- crease our flexibility, and make us more productive. Other aspects of the digital revolution may be less positive.
While many people believe that the combination of new technologies will result in fundamental changes of the spatial organization of our communi- ties, our travel patterns and our orga- nization of work, there are a variety of views on what the future holds and how our communities will be affect- ed. The nature of the resultant physi- cal changes likely will have impacts on the productivity of our economy and the quality of life in our communities, but these impacts are often not well- considered.
The most common view seems to be that remote work is here to stay, there will be decentralization of all activities and there will be systematic decline in urban areas as suburban and rural areas become increasingly attrac- tive. Over the years, however, many have predicted the demise of cities and many have been proven wrong. In fact, the history of the modern world has been one of increasingly ur- banized communities accompanied by increasing incomes.
Cities are the primary source of in- teraction among diverse people, opin- ions and economic realities. These interactions are both productive and civilizing. Out of the sometimes-cha- otic social interaction that occurs in cities, new ideas emerge that spark in- novation. An exceptionally large body of literature documents the relation- ship between urbanization, density and productivity. Dubbed by economists as “agglomeration economies,” urbanized environments have played a significant role in increasing income and economic well-being.
Will cities continue to play this role in the post-COVID future?
SUMMER 2021 DELAWARE LAWYER 15
SAQUAN STIMPSON