Post-pandemic cities: The great reset

Cities are the physical manifestation of the human species. As artefacts they represent the myriad of social, economic and political relationships in built form. In fact, with over 55 percent of the global population living in cities for the first time,¹ they have become the defining characteristic of the twenty-first century. Cities continue to attract people with opportunities created through the benefits of agglomeration and the United Nations predicts that they will be home to 68 percent of the global population by 2050, creating the greatest mass urbanization in the history of humankind.²

In 2020, however, cities experienced a population “flight,” with New York reported to have lost 420,000 people, or approximately 5 percent of its population, as a result of COVID-19. The spread of the disease, aided by physical proximity, has created a flight to suburban and exurban retreats. This exodus is akin to the post-World War II “white flight” to suburbia facilitated by the new-found freedom of car travel, which ultimately led to the “hollowing out” and blight of inner-urban areas in the later part of